Back From Demersal Trawling~

First thing first, demersal otter trawling in deep sea sure is hard work! You need to withstand the waves and seasickness apart from doing all those works!! Luckily I was okay for this fishing trip but some of my mates were not doing so well......

Well, our practical started on Saturday morning, 8 Aug with our group setting up the gillnet and pots at our selected sites. Then the pots was left for 24 hours while the gillnet was retrieved after 2 hours. Gillnet was set up twice, one in daytime and one in the evening to see the differences in catches! While waiting to retrieve the gillnet, we did fishing with rod and line. Apparently we did caught some fishes throughout the time~ And our gillnet was found empty for the daytime, while 2 fishes were caught during dusk. The pots was empty too. Sad~

The next morning at around 6am, our group followed the commercial trawler to bound for my first ever trawling experience.


The sea was rough, even early morning time but the weather was nice~ Cumulus clouds forming early in the morning..

The trawl was released into the seabed at locations more than 20 nautical miles away from land.



The trawl the lasted for 2 hours and in the mean time, I slept! Because the night before I totally stayed awake and was getting sleepy. It was a good nap though, windy and cool. Along the way at a point my mates noticed dolphins at a faraway distance. Then after 2 hours, the trawl net was retrieved back onto the boat. Sea birds were found circling in the air above the net, how smart of them~ But sorry, no food for y'all! Amazingly, a group of dolphins followed the net towards our boat!! There were quite a number of them, swam around and doing some jumps! so nice! They swam close to our boat and this is the first time I get this close with dolphins!! So gorgeous!



Soon after the net was fully retrieved, they dissapeared~ The harvest were unloaded on the deck, and our group together with the crews immediately sort out different kinds of fish, big and small, poisonous and non-venomous, according to species.. The smell stinks! We got some big flounders, squids, crabs, puffer fish, etc etc~



Soon UMS Stenella came to pick us up and another group take charge for second trawling.. Got back in UMS jetty at around 11.15am, and continued to sort the fishes for lab session next time.

Tired, exhausted and all beat down~
Overall it was a great experience though...
But I don't think I well go for another trawling in the near future, the stinky smell is still with me~
Ouch....