Technological trends in capture fisheries

Technological developments were a major cause for the increased landings from capture fisheries in the second half of the last century. The fishing vessels were made more powerful, combined with the development of better fishing gears partly as a consequence of the introduction of synthetic fibres in gears like trawls, purse seines and gill nets. Development of gear handling devices and electronic instruments to locate fish aggregations and control gear operation were equally important factors in this development. Such important developments of fleet and fishing methods are briefly reviewed in this article. Besides technical developments aimed to increase fishing efficiency, recent developments have also included technologies and fishing practice, which reduces the environmental impact including improved selective performance of some fishing gears resulting in reduced bycatch and discards. The article briefly provide an outlook of possible future developments of capture fisheries and it concludes that increased landings can be achieved if organisms lower in the food chain are exploited more intensively with proper developed technology, and that environmental concerns will force the industry to make more use of responsible fishing gears and practices.