Ghost Nets

[johhno]

I am presently doing some work with a top scientist who caried out extensive tests on so called gost netting .

He tells me it don't happen, which matches my own experiences.

 

.......

 

.... Several hours after both nets had been set, a large number of dogfishes were caught, causing the nets to collapse. Within 1 d, 2 commercial crustacean species, spider crabs Maja squinado and brown crabs Cancer pagurus, were attracted to the dead and decomposing fishes. Many of these animals also became trapped in the netting and were fed upon by their conspecifics and other scavengers. Some of these crustaceans also became entangled and died, producing a sequence of captures throughout the observation period. Catch rate began to decline within a few days of the initial deployment, probably related to a decline in the effective fishing area. The results indicate that lost nets could continue to catch commercial crustacean species for at least 9 mo after initial loss.

 

 

Don't they sort of contradict each other.

 

I guess it depends on how long it takes to catch sufficient fish to make the net sink; perhaps if the there weren't too many fish and the spider and brown crabs were on their mettle, then they'd be able to keep the net floating and catching their meals for them.

[wurzel]

Hello Johhno

 

It's not only fish that makes a net sink, there is all manner of other debris plus normaly a lost net is unutached atleast at one end which causes the net to roll around or just fold up into a heap.

I agree that in very deep water with litle tide run it would take a bit longer, but weeks not years.

[DoubleShotDamo]

The wreck in question was layed on a strip of ground and would fill up over night in them days it was very prolific but it did obviously get a rest with bad weather.

As i said upon till gear was lost on that wreck it would fish day after day it was a magnet to cod and believe me we are talking about a lof of fish in them days what you didnt do was take every fish of the wreck that is bad practice and it takes a lot longer to regenerate when this occcurs, but as i said it was nothing to take 80 stone of cod of a wreck 15 years ago .

You could catch 10 stone of cod on rod and line off Dungeness years ago! Anyway, not all fish are taken? So you chuck them back and let them float off down tide? They're f@cked once you'ved hauled them up from a great depth.