Projects accomplished by the Selective Fisheries Secretariat 2014-2017: a synthesis report

Commissioned by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water management, the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences, established a Secretariat for selective fishing between 2014 and 2017. The secretariat main task has been to gather and evaluate ideas of new gears from the industry on how to minimize unwanted catches. The industry´s initiative and engagement are essential for the successful development of new ideas. All projects have followed the same work flow; a development of project ideas by science-industry collaboration, an industry lead development phase and finally scientific evaluation and reporting. Thirty-four projects have been completed between 2014 and 2017. The separate projects have been reported yearly123 (in Swedish). As there is also an apparent need to interact with similar initiatives in other countries and to disseminate to an international audience we here summarize all 34 projects according to the results of the scientific evaluations, their applicability given current fisheries regulations and fishing practises and also on the up-take of the new gears. The report is divided between active and passive gears and the different projects are grouped based on fisheries (gear type and target species). In the end of the report, fact sheets is included for the most relevant project.