Trawling is one of the most common fishing technique, which can be used in several ways : bottom trawling, pelagic trawling or beam trawling.
Vessels of the fishing fleet use bottom trawling. They drag on the seabed a conical net, the trawl, linked to the ship by a set of cables (the warps). A ship can tow several trawls simultaneously. Thus, our ships work with two or even three trawls, depending on their fishing area. The trawl is weighted on its lower part to be kept on the seabed, and equipped with floater on its upper part in order to have a good vertical opening. This kind of trawl is as well endowed with lateral panels, which aim to keep the horizontal opening of the trawl thanks to the navigation speed. The trawl is towed at low speed, not faster than 3 or 4 knots, because it is at this rate that the panels diverge correctly. The size of trawl’s meshes is highly regulated; it depends on the targeted species, but also on the fishing area. The mesh size must be small enough to catch fishes or crustaceans, but large enough to not capture the juveniles..
