Contact
Rósa Jónsdóttir
Research Group Leader
rosa.jonsdottir@matis.is
"Fat is the bait" - bait from fishery byproducts
The aim of the project was to develop and produce composite baits for longline fishing from underutilized raw materials with newly developed snow technology that has been granted a patent. The chemical composition of bait raw material and the use of algae as antidote in bait were examined, in addition to which fishing experiments were carried out. In connection with the project, an application machine was designed and built, and experiments carried out with it in the spring of 2007 ended with 97% application. The use of algae as an antioxidant in bait was not very effective. The bait was quite developed right at the beginning of the storage experiment, so most likely the algae did not work properly. Vitamin C ice cream coating seemed to provide some protection, although vacuum packaging was most important. Many of the experiments that were carried out on the bait aimed to compare the bait with traditional baits made from the same material. Usually, less power was obtained from the bag bait, which can be traced in part to storage, but more problems are needed for storing bag bait than conventional bait. These experiments aim to test whether the bag bait has any repellent effect on fish approaching it. When interpreting the results, however, it must be borne in mind that raw material can be used in bag bait that cannot be used in traditional bait, better utilization of bait raw material is obtained and it is probably best for bag bait to be frozen in the sea. Towards the end of the project, fishing experiments indicated that bag bait yielded similar catches as traditional bait. During the last fishing trip in November 2006, haddock catches were better on bag bait than normal bait, but a flaw in the set-up of the experiment somewhat diminishes the veracity of the result. In addition, vitamin C-fortified bag bait gave slightly more catch than bag bait without vitamin C.
The aim of the project was to develop and produce effective bait for long line fishing from under-utilized raw material using newly developed snow technology that has been patented. The chemical composition of bait raw material and the use of seaweed as an antioxidant in the bait were studied and fishing experiments were done. In connection with the project a baiting machine was designed and produced. Experiments using the machine gave 97% of baited hooks. The use of seaweed as an antioxidant was not successful. The antioxidant activity of the seaweed was probably limited because the bait raw material was already oxidized in the beginning of the storage study. Icing the bait with vitamin C did give some protection although the most important factor seems to be the vacuum packaging. The aim of the fishing experiment was to study the attractiveness of the artificial bait. Most of the fishing experiments were done by studding the artificial bait against the traditional bait using the same raw material. The catch was often less from the artificial bait compared to traditional bait. This can possibly be explained by lower storage stability of the artificial bait due to oxidation. Using artificial bait mainly based on waste from fish processing plants and / or pelagic fish instead of expensive traditional bait material is however promising. The latest fishing experiments showed better results given similar catch for both the artificial and traditional bait. In the last experiment in November 2006 the haddock catch was better for the artificial bait that the traditional bait although it has to be mentioned that the experimental design was incomplete. Artificial bait with vitamin C added gave also better result than the artificial bait without vitamin C.
