With pelagic and semi-pelagic trawl door designs available, Icelandic trawl door manufacturer EKKÓ is seeing a growing interest in the advantages its gear offers, according to Smári Jósafatsson.
The company’s doors have already been supplied to trawlers in Iceland, Sweden and the UK, and he commented that while the company’s doors catch as well or better than comparable designs on the market, they have resulted in some serious fuel savings.
“The results have been almost unbelievable,” he said. “It’s almost too good to be true.”
The unique point of the design is that the doors provide the option of a conventional backstrop attachment on the backside of each door, but also allow for the backstrops to be rigged to the same side as the towing point. The result of this is that the angle of attack while towing is reduced to only 15°, making them even lighter to tow.
An additional feature is the hatch in each door, allowing the doors to be easily weighted.
“Open the hatch, and you can drop a length of chain inside the door to add weight. Just tie a rope to the end of the chain and hook it to a cleat by the hatch and the chain can easily be removed to lighten the doors again. It doesn’t have to be exact, but if the same length of chain goes into each door, then the weights are equal each side,” he explained.
He added that EKKÓ doors are built with an exceptionally robust construction, with the upper and lower sections joined with a heavy-duty central section that provides this high strength.
