Fishing Methods

Tuna longline fishing Tuna purse seine fishing Trawl fishing Squid Jigging fishery Saury stick held dip net fishery Toothfish Bottom Longline Fishing

Tuna longline fishing

This is a way of fishing using longlines consist of monofilament main line with branchlines attached. It uses baits such as saury, squid, etc.

The tuna longline fishery, the pioneer of Korea's deep sea fishing industry, has been operating since 1957, and the number of fishing vessels has increased to 136 (as of the end of 2022).
Tuna longline fishing operates in each coastal island country in the South Pacific as a main fishing ground, and the catch is exported to Japan and other countries. In particular, domestic demand for raw tuna has increased every year due to improvements in eating habits in Korea, and the market size has recently reached 17,045 tons per year.

Tuna purse seine fishing

This is a fishing method that surrounds schools of fish, such as skipjack tuna, with a long square net to prevent them from escaping.
Tuna purse-seining fishery in Korea was initiated by accessing into the Eastern Pacific fishing ground with 3 vessels in 1971.
Helicopter-aided mass operations were introduced in 1979 for the first time and the number of vessels 28 as of 2022. Most of the catches are supplied to the packers for our domestic consumption, and the remainders are being exported to foreign canneries.
In 2019, the catch was 244,735M/T and the value of export was US$ 182,905,000.

Trawl fishing (pollack, squid, krill, etc.)

A method of catching fish by dragging a sack-like net with a deployment plate from a powerboat. It is towed by connecting draglines, deployment plates, and halyards, and the catch is hauled out in end sacks.
The trawl fishery in Korea was initiated by deploying 8 vessels into the Atlantic Ocean in 1966, and through the steady investment thereafter the fleet grew to 319 in 1976. However, since 1977 when 200-miles exclusive economic zones were declared, the number of vessels has been gradually decreased down to 16 vessels as of the end of 2019.
Those vessels are classified as 3 North Pacific trawlers and 12 as foreign-based ones; among them, 3 in the Pacific Ocean, 10 in the Atlantic and 2 in the Southern Ocean as their main fishing grounds.

Pollack, the main target species of the Northern trawl fishery, has been recognized as an important source of protein for the nation, but the fishing grounds are shrinking.
Quota fishing in the Bering Sea and the Korea-U.S. joint fishing program ended in the late 1980s, and since then, Korea has relied on fishing on the high seas and has been fishing in Soviet waters since 1989, finally concluding the Korea-Soviet Fisheries Agreement in 1991, and successfully fishing for pollack.
The number of overseas trawlers plummeted due to the reduction of trawlers in the Atlantic Ocean (West Africa), the withdrawal of Indonesian trawlers from the fishing grounds, the abolition of trawler licenses in the Indian Ocean (Somalia), and the conversion of Korean-flagged New Zealand trawlers into joint ventures.

Squid Jigging fishery

Squid jigging vessels have overhead lights which illuminate the water and attract squids. When the squids gather in the shaded area under the boats, the fishing machine catches them and repeats landing and lifting automatically.
The squid are caught using barbless lures on monofilament fishing lines which are jigged up and down in the water by machines. The jigs used are cylindrically in shape, and spaced approximately 1 metre apart. Instead of normal fishing hooks, each jig contains multiple tiers of closely spaced spikes, which face towards the top of the jig. When squid try to attack the jig, they become tangled around the vertically facing spikes.
Each jigging machine has a roller which extends out from the side of the boat, allowing the line to be lowered into the water column away from the edge of the boat, and be jigged up and down without causing abrasion to the line. Barbless lures are used so that as lures are recovered over the end rollers, squid fall off into the boat. This assists in reducing the handling time required to individually remove squid from the lures.

The squid fisheries were initiated in 1979 by accessing the drift net fisheries for the catch of red squid in the North Pacific and such full scale fishing operations from 1982 but it had been completely closed up under the UN resolution as of the end of 1992.
The number of fishing vessels and catch was steadily increased, and as a part of new fishing ground exploitation together with development of New Zealand and Australian waters, such fisheries were expedited by proceeding into Falklands waters of the South Western Atlantic Ocean in 1985, so that new turning point of squid fisheries in Korea was provided. And Peruvian fishing ground was newly added to get raw materials for processing from 1990. The number of vessels as of the end of 2022 was 21 vessels. The production in 2022 was 28,090M/T.

Saury stick held dip net fishery

Saury Stick held dip net fishery is a way of catching saury. The vessel gathers them on the starboard side of by using fish-luring light, deploys the net in the shape of a wrapping cloth on the port side of the ship, make the schools of fish go into the net by using lamps, and catches them by tightening nets with ropes.
The saury stick held dip net fishery was initiated by three trial fishing vessels deployed to the high-seas in the North Western Pacific for the first time in 1985.
Such fishery, converted into a subject to formal permit from 1987, and overcoming difficulties of unfamiliar fishing technology in the early stage.
The number of vessels as of the end of 2022 was 19 vessels(all of them are dual fishery ones), and production was 3,439M/T.

Toothfish Bottom Longline Fishing

Bottom longliners catch demersal fish species, using baited hooks attached to a pair of mainline weighted down to the seafloor. But since the hooks and weights contact the seafloor, a bottom impact assessment is required in order to evaluate the level of potential gear impact on Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs).
Bottom longline fishing—the method studied to have negligible impact on the marine ecosystems—is a preferred fishing method used in the clean waters of the Southern Ocean, under the monitoring, control, and surveillance of the Convention of the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). The target species of bottom longline fisheries are toothfish species and bycatch species are skates and rays. Most of the toothfish catch are exported, while a small portion is distributed domestically.