ABOVE: Don Weeks has been fishing with the skimmer trawl for 12 years. 



After the skimmer trawl was successfully 

 tested and introduced in North Carolina, it be- 

 came a popular form of gear in shallow waters. 



Don Weeks of Morehead City has been 

 using the skimmer trawl in the Newport River 

 for 12 years. During the white and brown 

 shrimp season, Weeks keeps his trawler moored 

 in the middle of the Newport. 



"Eighty-five to 90 percent of the time, I go 

 shrimping at night," says Weeks. "Most of the 

 time, I start at 8 p.m. and don't stop until 4 or 5 

 in the morning." 



In the early 1990s, Hines led a North 

 Carolina Sea Grant study on the skimmer trawl 

 when it was introduced in state waters. With 

 assistance from the Gulf and South Atlantic 

 Fisheries Development Foundation, John 

 Weeks built a set of skimmer trawls and tried 

 them aboard the school's small work skiff. 



"He found good results on white shrimp," 

 says Hines. 



In a larger-scale study supported by the 

 National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS 

 or NOAA Fisheries), Sea Grant researchers 

 compared shrimp catch between skimmer and 

 otter trawls. 



Researchers found that the skimmer 

 trawl was very effective in catching white 

 shrimp in the North and Newport rivers in 



Carteret County, according to North Carolina 

 Sea Grant's publication The Skimmer Trawl In 

 North Carolina Estuaries. 



"Paul Biennann and I built the first com- 

 mercial-scale skimmers on his boat, the Frankie 

 and Al," says Hines. "In the study, we fished 

 the skimmers alongside the conventional otter 

 trawl rig Capt. Will, owned by Clinton Willis," 

 adds Hines. 



More than 23 percent of the total biomass 

 collected by the skimmer trawl was white 

 shrimp — a higher average than with other 

 gear, according to the Sea Grant publication. 



"In general, they found the skimmer trawl 

 caught less bycatch per minute than the otter 

 trawl," the researchers wrote. They also found 

 skimmer trawl bycatch for white shrimp was 

 more likely to survive than otter trawl bycatch. 



However, the otter trawl was more effec- 

 tive with brown shrimp. 



NEW NOAA STUDY 



NOAA Fisheries' Southeast Fisheries 

 Science Center recently began conducting a re- 

 search study of the framed-net shrimp fisheries 

 in the waters of Louisiana and North Carolina. 



The gear includes the skimmer trawl 

 and butterfly nets that are used by commercial 

 shrimpers in Louisiana. The difference between 



skimmer trawls and butterfly nets is that the 

 skimmer has no frame on the bottom part of 

 the opening, while the butterfly net has a square 

 frame that completely encircles the mouth 

 opening of the net. Neither has doors like those 

 found on otter trawl gear. 



The butterfly net is usually fished in the 

 current much like a channel net used in North 

 Carolina. 



Federal and state laws require shrimp 

 trawls to have bycatch reduction devices 

 — which allow small fish to escape from the net 

 before reaching the tail bags. Federal law also 

 requires shrimpers to use turtle excluder devices. 



The new study is designed to evaluate 

 the effects of increased use of skimmer trawls 

 by commercial shrimpers, according to Jim 

 Nance, chief of fisheries management at the 

 Southeast Fisheries Science Center's Galveston 

 Laboratory. 



"We want to assess the catch and bycatch 

 from that fishery," adds Nance. "Skimmer 

 trawling may be more efficient because you use 

 less fuel." 



For the skimmer trawl study, observers 

 will be placed aboard vessels to record vessel 

 and gear characteristics as well as catch and 

 effort data by season and area. 



"The study is voluntary," says Nance. 

 'This particular study will be completed by 

 next year, but additional funding may allow us 

 to go beyond that date." 



NOAA has been gathering data on the ot- 

 ter trawl since the early 1990s, when research- 

 ers tested the amount of bycatch caught in the 

 southeastern United States. 



Results showed that in the Gulf and South 

 Atlantic shrimp fisheries, about 5 1 percent of 

 the catch by weight was composed of finfish, 

 according to a NOAA Fisheries report. In ad- 

 dition, the researchers found that 18 percent of 

 the catch was made up of commercial shrimp 

 species, 13 percent by noncommercial shrimp 

 crustaceans and 18 percent by noncrustacean 

 invertebrates. 



SHRIMP HISTORY 



Historically, a wide variety of gear has 

 been used to harvest shrimp. 



Native Americans caught shrimp for 

 subsistence using dip nets, seines and weirs. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 9 



