To compare the catches made using gillnets, trammel nets, and gillnets with supporting lines, several experiments were conducted with commercial vessels near Uljin and Pohang in Eastern Korea between July 2010 and May 2011. Two sets of 13 different nets were used, including 5 panels of gillnets and trammel nets each with stretched mesh sizes of 7.6, 9.1, 10.6, 12.1, and 13.6 cm and 3 panels of gillnets with a mesh size of 9.1 cm with supporting lines with different line spacing. The outer (stretched) mesh size of the trammel nets measured 51.5 cm. The target fishes of the fishing nets were various types of flounders. The catch rate of flounders was 50.7% of the total catch in weight. The total catch for all nets was 443.8 kg. The predominant species was pointhead flounder (Cleisthenes pinetorum). The total catch by trammel nets was 1.4 times that of the comparable gillnets. But more pointhead flounder were caught by gillnets than by trammel nets, though there was no significant difference. Fishermen catching the pointhead flounder in Korea said that there was no need to use trammel net to catch it; this was an unexpected finding compared to the findings of other flounder fisheries. The amounts of roughscale sole, brown sole, and blackfin flounder caught by trammel nets were greater than those caught by gillnets. The mean lengths (standard deviation) of blackfin flounder, pointhead flounder, brown sole, and roughscale sole were 21.0 (4.57), 22.9 (3.40), 24.7 (4.90), and 28.3 (5.43) cm, respectively; there were significant differences in mean length (p < 0.00001). Therefore, in order to catch flounder efficiently, the fishing nets and mesh size should be chosen according to the target species. One advantage of using supporting lines is that it prevents breakage by strengthening the material especially when utilized on a rough bottom. Catch by using gillnet with supporting lines was not greater than that by using trammel net for the conservation of fisheries resources.
The investigation for species composition and catch in the Korean deep-water of the East Sea (also known as Sea of Japan) was carried out with trammel nets of 7 mesh sizes (6.1~24.2cm) offshore Donghae (2006) and Yangyang (2007) of Korea. The catches were 1,268kg and composed of 37 species between 200m and 1,200m in depth. The principal species caught were Taknka's snailfish, salmon snailfish, red snow crab, hunchback sculpin, snow crab, spinyhead sculpin, Tanaka's eelpout, Alaska cod and so on. Those were target fish for commercial value except salmon snailfish. The mesh sizes for the largest catch were 10.6cm and 15.2cm in the fishing ground of Donghae and Yangyang, respectively. The habitat of snow crab was shallower than that of red snow crab in both areas. Trammel net enabled to investigate fish in deep-water with small fishing vessel and rather cheap expenses in contrast to bottom trawl that required too much of it. With increasing inner mesh size of trammel net the mean size of some principal species such as Taknka's snailfish, spinyhead sculpin, hunchback sculpin, Pacific cod, snow crab, red snow crab and hybrid between snow crab and red snow crab tended to be large in certain range of mesh size.
For an effective management of fisheries resources, we need fisheries informations necessary for the establishment of reasonable fishing effort and TAC distribution. To study the present state of by-catch and discard of gill-net fishery in the East Sea, we carried out fishing research using trammel nets in the coastal sea of Susan-port (Yangyang), Jangho-port (Samcheok) and Hupo-port (Uljin). As a result, a total of catch of Susan was 259,172g and that of Hopo was 577,638g. Thus Catch of Susan was 1.49 times more than that of Hupo considering the number of used fishing gear. And catch of Janho was 7.4 times more than that of Susan considering the number of experiment. Two methods of by-catch analysis in this study were used, one method is standardizing of listed species catching possible in fishing license, another method is regarding catch species under 1% of total catch as by-catch. As a result of by-catch analysis of two method, by-catch rate of Susan was 6.55% and 5.87% respectively, that of Hupo was 44.70% and 5.24% and that of Jangho was 0.96% and 2.31%. Discard rate of fish in Susan, Hupo and Jangho were 1.59%, 3.42%, 2.23% respectively.
For an effective management of fisheries resources, we need fisheries informations necessary for the establishment of reasonable fishing effort and TAC distribution. We carried out fishing research using trammel nets in the coastal sea of Susan-port(Yangyang, Gangwondo, Korea) and Hupo-port(Uljin, Gyeongbukdo, Korea) and analyzed fishing power variation of the fishing gear in terms of species composition, condition and so on for both sites. A total of 29 species were caught with most dominant species of Hippoglossoides dubius followed by Pseudopleuronectes herzensteini, Lophius litulon and Alcichthys elongatus in Susan. The total number of species caught in Hupo was 37 species with most dominant species of Todarodes pacifius followed by Lophius litulon, Hexagrammos agrammus and Pseudopleuronectes herzensteini. CPUE of Susan fishing area per trammel net was 12.74 fish and 2.00kg on average, while it was 6.80 fish and 2.27kg on average for Hupo. The fishing power index for both sites was 1, placing the two fishing grounds in a same level.