The Development of Fishing Trawl Testing Capabilities at NSRDC

Apparatus has been developed to allow the hydrodynamic testing of trawl nets at the David W. Taylor Naval Ship R & D Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The 6.7 m wide circulating water channel has been fitted with easily positionable support struts to support a wide variety of scale model nets and to allow observations and measurements. The 15.8 m wide towing basin carriage has been fitted with fixed struts to tow large models or full size trawls. These combined facilities provide the largest and most complete trawl evaluation facilities in the world. This paper describes the facilities and instrumentation used in the trawl tests. A list of the nets tested to date is provided along with examples of test results.