Reducing fishery impact on benthic community: new data by the use of guarding nets from the Marine Protected Area of Egadi Islands

Fishing discards are still one of the major management issues, particularly in the Marine Protected Areas. Small scale fisheries is the common practice of resources exploitation in the Marine Protected Areas, thanks to its higher sustainability. The use of trammel net produces lower environmental damages than that of others fishing gears, but the real magnitude of the impact of this gear on local marine biodiversity is still far to be clearly understood, especially on the benthic species. In this study, we used an alternative trammel net, called "guarding net", that is a modified trammel net designed to reduce discards and, in particular, of macro benthic organisms. Nine experimental fishing trips were carried out to test simultaneously two types of nets: the experimental guarding net and the traditional trammel net, used as control. Our results highlight that the use of the guarding net provides a remarkable reduction of the fishing discards compared with the traditional fishing gear, as regards the benthic species.