Fishing gear used in coastal fishing should be equipped with fishing buoys, indicating their locations, thus enabling their constant monitoring and detection by other ships to avoid collision. However, common fishing buoys fabricated using Styrofoam, bamboo, or PVC have short detection ranges owing to their weak radar radio wave reflection. Although research on improving the performance of radar equipment is in progress, studies on early detection of fishing gear to reduce collisions with ships sailing nearby are limited. In this study, we conducted experiments to determine methods to prevent collisions between ships and fishing gear by improving both the fishing buoy material and installation method for the reflector to increase the radar detection range of the fishing buoys.

As a series of fundamental researches on the development of an automatic identification monitoring system for fishing gear. Firstly, the study on the installation method of automated identification buoy for the coastal improvement net fishing net with many loss problems on the west coast was carried out. Secondly, the study was conducted find out how to install an automatic identification buoy for coastal gill net which has the highest loss rate among the fisheries. GPS for fishing was used six times in the coastal waters around Seogwipo city in Jeju Island to determine the developmental status and underwater behavior to conduct a field survey. Next, a questionnaire was administered in parallel on the type of loss and the quantity and location of fishing gear to be developed and the water transmitter. In the field experiment, the data collection was possible from a minimum of 13 hours, ten minutes to a maximum of 20 hours and ten minutes using GPS, identifying the development status and underwater behavior of the coastal gillnet fishing gear. The result of the survey showed that the loss of coastal net fishing gear was in the following order: net (27.3%), full fishing gear (24.2%), buoys, and anchors (18.2%). The causes were active algae (50.0%), fish catches (33.3%) and natural disasters (12.5%). To solve this problem, the installation method is to attach one and two electronic buoys to top of each end of the fishing gear, and one underwater transmitter at both ends of the float line connected to the anchor. By identifying and managing abnormal conditions such as damage or loss of fishing gear due to external factors such as potent algae and cutting of fishing gear, loss of fishing gear can be reduced. If the lost fishing gear is found, it will be efficiently collected.

In this paper, numerical modeling is conducted to analyze the tension of an anchor line by varying the size and drag coefficient of a buoy when the trapnet is influenced by the wave and the current simultaneously. A mass-spring model was used to analyze the behavior of trapnet underwater under the influence of waves and current. In the simulation of numerical model, wave height of 3, 4, 5 and 6 m, a period of 4.4 s, and the flow speed of 0.7 m/s were used for the wave and current condition. The drag coefficients of buoy were 0.8, 0.4 and 0.2, respectively. The size of buoy was 100, 50 and 25% based on the cylindrical buoy (0.0311 ㎥) used for swimming crab trap. The drag coefficient of the trapnet, the main model for numerical analysis, was obtained by a circular water channel experiment using a 6-component load cell. As a result of the simulation, the tension of the anchor line decreased proportional to buoy’s drag coefficient and size; the higher the wave height, the greater the decrease rate of the tension. When the buoy drag coefficient and size decreased to one fourth, the tension of the anchor line decreased to a half and the tension of the anchor line was lower than the holding power of the anchor even at 6 m of wave height. Therefore, reducing the buoy drag coefficient and size appropriately reduces the trapnet load from the wave, which also reduces the possibility of trapnet loss.

This study aims to reduce the force exerted to the buoy of the gillnet by wave and current. Five buoy models were selected for experiments and their rope tensions under wave and current action were compared. Five models were EL (ellipsoid), EL-H (ellipsoid-hole), SL (streamlined body), SP (sphere) and CL (cylinder, traditional type). In the first experiment, the Five models were tested without any attachment. In the second experiment, a flagpole was attached to each model. As a result, in the condition without flagpole, the tensions of four models with the exception of the CL were about a half of that of the CL. In the condition with flagpole, the tension of all models was twice larger than that without flagpole. Thus, a new model was suggested to improve the problem, which has a combined body that of a flagpole and a buoy Three new models of CL-L (long and thin cylinder), LF (leaf shape) and LF-F (leaf shape with fin) were designed. Also a cylinder type (CLD) with a flagpole as a control was included in the experiment. As a result, the LF-F had the smallest tension and a half tension of the CLD. Therefore, it is supposed that the flagpole and buoy combined model could reduce the tension on buoy rope and contribute to improve the gillnet loss problem.