In the actual sea, the additional resistance due to external force such as wind, current and wave is accompanied, and the required power is added in response to these resistance. Especially when the ship is sailing at low speed, the effects of wind and current have a great impact on the safe control of the ship. Likewise, it is thought that the effects of wind and current have a great impact on the trawl ship control since the towing speed of a bottom trawl ship is a low speed of 3 to 4 knots. If the reduce of ship speed and the increase of engine power due to the influence of wind and current can be identified, the safe towing power can be calculated based on a given engine output. Thus, the appropriate size of a fishing gear can be determined. In this study, a total of 20 trawl operations were conducted for seasonal maritime research in the same research area according to the operation mode of propeller. Based on navigation data, trawl fishing data, and engine performance data acquired during the towing fishing gear, and data of ship speed, hull resistance, fishing gear resistance, wind force and current force according to an incidence angle were estimated. The overall power for these loads was calculated and compared with the measured engine power, and the effects of wind force and current force on the engine power were investigated.

Trawl fishing is a fishing method in which a large, motorized trawler tows a bag-shaped net to catch fish living at the bottom or middle layers. For a trawl gear, it is of utmost importance to select the gear size and towing speed suitable for the effective horsepower (EHP) of the trawler in the design stage. In general, the power required to move an object is proportional to the product of the object speed and resistance; therefore, there are various choices for the gear resistance and towing speed given the effective horsepower of the trawler. However, there have been few studies on the gear design of an appropriate scale for the towing speed given the effective horsepower of the trawler. In this study, the resistance and shape of three types of midwater trawl gears were analyzed using SimuTrawl, a computer simulation tool. In addition, the relationship between the propulsion force and speed of the ship was clarified when the size and effective horsepower of the trawler were determined. Finally, we suggested the relationship between the towing speed and the resistance of the gear when the trawler towed the net was investigated, and a specific method of selecting the gear size according to the towing speed.