By-Catch and Discarding of Trawl Fisheries at the Mediterranean Coast of Egypt

Trawling remains a controversial method of fishing due to the poor selectivity of trawl net and the resultant catch of huge amount of non target species. This work aimed to throw light on quantitative data of the catch composition, by- catch levels and discard estimates of bottom trawling along the Mediterranean coasts of Egypt. Experimental fishing operations using the Italian trawl net during 2008 pointed out the following: The non target catch comprised 51.07 and 37.04% of the total catch of trawl net during spring and summer seasons, respectively. A category of the non target catch comprising 21.52 and 7.86% of the total catch were discarded during spring and summer seasons, respectively. The by-catch taken through the period of study embodied 13 commercial fish species, the average length of which was 4.7 to 10.9 cm attaining average weight of1.1 to 21.2 g. Furthermore most of the target fish species were retained in the cod end with small sizes before reaching the length at first maturity. In conclusion, to conserve the fish stocks of demmersal species, it is strongly recommended to increase the mesh size of trawl nets used on commercial scale along the Egyptian coast of the Mediterranean.