• Each year, 20 million tonnes of fish are discarded at sea or brought back to the quayside without being exploited.

  • To reduce these unnecessary catches, smart nets are currently being tested by Ifremer teams in Lorient.

  • The device allows the fisherman to observe in real time what he is catching and to sort the target species.

In the future, fishing will have to be sustainable otherwise all the sea resources will be exhausted. Aware of these challenges, Ifremer is currently testing smart nets in Lorient in order to reduce the catch of species not targeted by fishing. . “A trawl is like a large dip net, it is towed behind the vessel for several hours without knowing what is going into it in real time, namely are these species that are targeted by the fisherman or no ”, describes Julien Simon, from Ifremer's laboratory for fisheries biology and technology.

Each year, 20 million tonnes of fish, or about a quarter of total marine catches, are thus discarded at sea or brought back to the quay although not exploited, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Variable depending on the target species, the rejection rate in the case of sardine fishing is 22%, when it reaches 41% for langoustine fishing, according to data from the French Research Institute for exploitation of the sea.

The fish sorted before being brought back on board

To reduce unnecessary catches, Ifremer, in partnership with the Université Bretagne Sud, the Morbihan fisheries committee and the Marport company, specializing in high-tech sensors, has therefore developed this intelligent trawl project, which constitutes " a decision support tool for fishermen ”, according to Julien Simon. Equipped with cameras, sensors and powerful analysis software, the device thus makes it possible to inform the fisherman in real time of the species caught, their size and their abundance.

"I am not interested in having the fish on the deck and sorting it once it is dead, I prefer to sort it on the bottom", notes Eric Guygniec, head of the Breton armament company Apak and project partner.

With such a device, "we know at all times what goes into the net, the size of the fish and the species, and if the species does not interest us we can open a trap," he explains.

The cost of this technology questions fishermen

In addition to this innovative pelagic net device, that is to say moving between the surface and the bottom without coming into contact with it, a bottom trawl, also equipped with cameras and sensors, is being tested in Lorient. But this time the device aims to preserve the marine ecosystem as well as possible. "Depending on the presence of targeted or non-targeted species, the trawl will switch to fishing or flight mode in order to avoid having an impact on the seabed," explains Julien Simon, in front of a prototype submerged in this basin where a current is generated in order to simulate the advance of a boat.

However, on the docks, some sailors are worried about the cost of such a device.

Even if, like any virtuous innovation, it could be eligible for aid when it is put on the market by 2025. “Can we buy a trawl of this type packed with technology?

»Asks a fisherman from Lorient.

The latter indicates that he recently put his boat up for sale because of the “too heavy” constraints weighing on the profession.

"It is sure that it will have a cost", also warns Soazig Palmer-Le Gall at the head of the Bigouden armament of Guilvinec and president of the organization of producers Pêcheurs de Bretagne.

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  • Biodiversity

  • Ifremer

  • Lorient

  • Fish

  • Planet

  • Peach

  • Sea

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