Today’s special

Let’s do something special because it is Friday, and upload a video by Bernardo Pérez, from IEO Santander. Bernardo took part in the survey in 2014 and hopefully we will see him again on board, for many reasons. One of them is that he makes very nice videos, as you can see. He put in a fair amount of work.
 

For those not familiar with fishing follows a brief description of the footage, which shows how is the gear shot, seen from several angles. Bernardo took several videos and edited them to make this clip.

 

The video starts with the gear on deck. You can see very well the rockhopper, or line with black bobbins that roll over the seabed, separating the net from the substrate. The floats line is attached to the top panel at the mouth of the net, and helps to keep it open.
 

Soon you see the deckhands taking their places. The mobile door  goes down and a whinch is used to shoot the net overboard down the ramp. The foreman takes his place on deck between the flotas to make sure that the net wings do not get entangled as they unwind from the net drum.
 

Once the net is in the water, the mobile door goes up and the foreman puts two vertical guides to keep the legs (cables linking the net to the otter doors) open.
 

In the stern there are the gallows, where the otter boards are stored when we are not fishing . The next step is attaching the otter boards to the net, which is done with yet more cables called spans.
 

Then the towing warps are paid out from split winches, their length depending of depth. The otter boards drop to the bottom, dragging the net with them. When the warps become tense, the otter boards open with the water flow, and at the same time the vertical opening of the net decreases. When the distance between doors is adequate and the net is on the bottom we say the gear has been set and we start counting the 30 minutes our hauls last.