1Shimane Prefectural Fisheries Technology Center, Hamada, Shimane 697-0051, 2Faculty of Fisheries, Kagoshima University, Shimoarata, Kagoshima 890-0056, Japan
Aiming to decrease the bycatch of giant jellyfish in the bottom trawl fishery, we developed a bottom trawl fishing gear with an intercepting net and a vent in its main net to exclude giant jellyfish. We expected that the intercepting net would release giant jellyfish from the vent of the fishing gear while fish would pass through meshes of the net and move into the codend of the fishing gear. In the model experiment, the trawl net smoothly excluded artificial jellyfish. Trawl experiments demonstrated that the fishing gear can reduce the bycatch of jellyfish by 40 to 70% and catch over 60% of fish.