Trawl is defined as a funnel shaped wide mouth fishing net that is dragged by boats at the bottom of the water. Altough this terminolgy provides a wholeness, it is lacking in terms of the integrity of trawl fishery.Trawl fishing, is one of the types of drag nets used in aquaculture, generally in areas over 30-40 meters in open seas or at least 3 miles off the coast, with one or two boats at a speed of 5-6 miles per hour, is the event of scanning of a certain area in mid-water or on the surface of water and water column.
Trawl fishing is a kind of hunting method that has been known and practiced in our county for a long time. In the absence of motorboats, generally two ships were used to hunt by rubbing their nets by utilizing the wind force. Today, this fishing is done with motor boats and according to the single ship system. (fish and fishing magazine volume 12 issue 12,25)
The characteristics feature of trawlers is that they are above 12 meters. Samsun trawler fishing boats started fishing mainly in Samsun water at 1970s. In the 1970s, small boats of 12 meters and below, carier boats, and even the boats converted without towing were used as trawlers in Samsun waters. Samsun fisherman has not been able to develop a standart size for trawls in the years when he owned the first trawlers. This searching the standart size was mostly related to economic deprivation of Samsun fishermen. In the 1980s, length standards were introduced for the newly manufactured trawlers in the shipyards, sheet metal boats were started to be made with the developing fishing technology, and the trawler boats thus attained the length standard.
Trawl is a drag web. Its origin is very old. Trawling, which used to be towed with boats in the past, is now done with fishing vessels with advanced engine power. The trawl net is a set of nets 25 meters long, consisting of the arm, the main mouth and the bag. There are two large and flat wooden apparatus close to the arms of the trawl. Fishermen call it a door or a hatch. These apparatuses keep the main mouth open. The hatches scan the bottom of the sea with steel ropes. The trawler, which is a hunting vehicle consisting of three main parts, namely the wing, the body and the bag, is dragged on the ground or on the water. It is a hunting gear that is dragged in the water or at the bottom of the water with ship. The types of the trawls; the bottom trawl that is mostly used, palegic trawl (midwater trawl), and the surface trawl. Trawling is such a technical work and fishing method that all the components in this methodical system have added integrity to the ‘trawl’ and this job has been defined as a ‘trawl’ by including the name of the job, its boat, its crew and all of its equipment. It is the same for fishermen who are called “volici” in a similar example. That is, the fishing gear used over time has become a name given to the fishing boat, the whole boat.
In Samsun trawler boats can hunt 8 months in a year. The trawler boats can work an average of 5 days a week, work an average of 10 hours a day. A trawler hunts160 days in a year in full compliance with the prohibitions; and in a good hunting season it has the power to catch 800kg fish per a day. (Doğan,1992:40)
The type of fish that caught in trawling is vary. In the bottom trawler, flat fish that live at the bottom and move slowly, and crustaceans such as tongue, turbot, stingray, red mullet, tabby, haddock, shrimp and lobster are hunted. In the middle water trawler; Pelagic and semi-pelagic fish such as bonito, mackerel, bluefish, sardine, horse mackerel etc, which migrate in flock, are caught. With the surface trawl, slow-moving and close to the surface fish such as anchovy, smelt, sprat etc. are caught. Turbot, red mullet and haddock take the first place among the primary target species of fishermen in Samsun.
Trawler fishing has become so widespread in Turkey over time; the fishermen who had the first trawler to bring the trawler to these waters did not even imagine that trawlers could multiply so much and that the trawling technique could develop so much. Evaluation of Samsun Sea as a trawling area and its structure suitable for trawling fishing has caused Samsun province to take the first place in the current trawler boat population in Turkey. Especially after the 1970s, with the increase of trawler boats in Samsun fishing industry, a noticeable increase was recorded in the species caught in Samsun. An article about the numbers of trawlers in the 1940s is quite remarkable. “While two bottom trawl ships were operating in Iskenderun in 1940, it increased to eleven in 1954. In the Black Sea, there were one trawl ship in 1947 and two in 1952, and this type of fishing was completely abandoned in 1953. In the last two years, Samsun cold storage has taken the first step towards participating in this productive work. (Öfker, 1956:19)
Samsun shelf-region, formed by the Kızılırmak and Yeşilırmak rivers, is at the head of the most important fishing areas of the Black Sea. The Kızılırmak and Yeşilırmak fields, which have a wide and flat topographic structure stretching for kilometers between the borders of Ünye and Gerze; with the effect of the nutritive elements carried by these rivers, it creates an extremely suitable habitat for especially demersal (bottom) and pelagic (middle water) fish species. For these reasons, trawler fishing in our country started in this region and especially after 1980s, it showed great development and created a very important fishing potential for Samsun. (Gümüş&others, 2011:2)
The types used in Samsun are mostly bottom trawl and middle water trawl. bottom trawl net used by fishermen from Samsun in bottom trawling; A tool with a length of 15 meters, a depth of 1-1.5 meters and a width of 5 meters with a 20mm eye gap is used. 50-60 meters of water pressure was calculated in the bottom trawler and it was determined that it recorded more than 1.5 meters of height at the bottom of the water. The middle water trawl, on the other hand, is recorded at a height of 5-6 meters and is around 30 meters in length. Surface trawlers are 50meters long and 15meters deep. Surface trawler is a production vehicle that is dragged by two boats and all fish that are fished with purse seine boats are also caught in surface trawler. Surface trawler is an even more economical type of hunting when compared to purse seine.
Today, trawling fishing in the region has an important dynamic for Samsun’s economy with both bottom trawl and pelagic trawler fishing. There are four important trawl fshing areas in Samsun. These are; Terme, Canik, Dereköy and Yakakent. Canik in the centre of Samsun and Yakakent, located at the very end of the Samsun, are the oldest settlements in trawl fishing. Terme region and Dereköy region, on the other hand, have been evaluated as new areas for trawling since 1980s, due to their virginity compared to other counted region. The fishing fleet capacity of the fishing shelters operating in these settlements; Terme 80, Canik 106, Dereköy 70 and Yakakent 108. (Gümüş& others, 201:2). Here the quantitative superiority of Yakakent in trawler boats should be sought in the fishing history of Yakakent. Yakakent has pioneered the fishermen of Samsun in learning and applying the fishing knowledge, technical knowledge and equipment, especially trawl fishing technique in Samsun.
