Helix rope is the key to the self-spreading properties of Gloria Helix pelagic trawls, rapidly opening the gear when shooting away and contributing to maintaining ideal gear geometry in a turn while towing. The core of conventional Helix rope is nylon, but the use of a new Robus HMPE enables the same strength to be achieved, but with a significantly thinner Helix rope, which consequently reduces towing resistance and allows towing speeds to be stepped up.
‘The Helix Robus rope has given new scope to the design of Gloria pelagic trawls,’ said Hampiðjan fishing gear technologist Einar Skaftason. ‘There’s plenty to play for by developing lighter gear, particularly for fishing mackerel, in which speed is a deciding factor in catching the largest fish. It’s also important to make blue whiting gear lighter, as blue whiting is an energy-demanding fishery and lighter gear reduces fuel consumption.’
Breaking strength testing carried out on Helix Robus rope at Hampiðjan Baltic’s R&D division in Lithuania has demonstrated that rope diameters can be scaled down considerably, such as by switching 16mm conventional rope for 12mm Robus, which results in a substantial reduction in towing resistance.
Einar Skaftason, fishing gear technologist.
‘We produced a Gloria 1760 mackerel trawl for Venus NS-150 for the last mackerel season, using Helix Robus ropes in the forward sections. The results with this trawl were highly encouraging and since then we have supplied five mackerel trawls made with Helix Robus for this year’s season,’ Einar Skaftason said.
Blue whiting trawls made with Helix Robus rope have also been in development recently, and these have been going through test phases with outcomes that look promising. Bringing together the self-spreading properties of Helix rope and the strength of Robus has resulted in genuine super-self-spreading technology.
