The major modalities authorised for commercial fishing are:
Surrounding nets
- Sardine nets or purse seines: A surrounding net used to catch small coastal pelagic fish such as mackerel, Atlantic horse mackerel, sardines, bogues and anchovies.
- Lampara-like nets: A surrounding net authorised only for catching live bait for tuna fishing.
- Salema porgy net: A variant of the surrounding net used soley to catch salema porgies.
Gillnets
- Trammels and school shark nets: Gillnets consisting of two or three panels in the first net and one in the second net, used to catch inshore species such as mullet, sargo, striped seabream, sea bream, black seabream and common pandora. Gillnets are only permitted temporarily in the San Andrés and Candelaria fisherman's guilds.
Traps
- Pots for fish: A frame, generally circular in shape, covered with a degradable net or lining, with one or two entrances and one or two larger doors, used to catch coastal demersal fish, moray eels, giant moray and octopus.
- Drum for moray eels: A cylinder with one or two entrances shaped like truncated cones on the base, made of flexible rods, with a side door.
- Pole and line: A small bamboo rod with a fishing line and hook to catch tuna and similar fish, including bonito, yellowfin tuna, tuna, albacore, bigeye tuna, wahoo and figate tuna.
With hooks
- Handlines, cords or pole lines: Verticle tackle, involving handlines or fishing rods to which fishing lines with hooks are attached to capture coastal demersal fish.
- Trolling: Vertical tackle with one or two main fishing lines that are towed from the stern of the boat to capture large pelagic fish, tuna, swordfish, gilt-head bream and sharks.
- Handline fishing: A short line held in the hand with a hook and weight attached to it. Used with goggles or a mask to capture viejas.
- Hooks for catching lesser flying squid: A cylindrical or oval unit to which one or three crowns of hooks are attached in a row, used to capture cephalopods such as squid and lesser flying squid.
- Longline fishing: Tackle consisting of up to 500 hooks hanging down from the surface to capture tuna, swordfish and sharks or at the bottom to capture hake, common dentex and other demersal fish.
With hoist nets
- Smelt nets: A metal hoop hanging from several arms to which a bag-shaped net is attached, used to capture viejas, Abudefduf luridus and other fish.
With fishing tools
- Wahoo rod: A wooden pole up to four metres long with a large hook or a harpoon with one or more points at the end, attached to a string.
- Spears: A rod made of iron or a similar material, around one metre long, ending in a barbed tip, used to capture octopuses.
The tackle and gear described above are used to capture a large variety of species (more than 60), including viejas, combers, Mycteroperca fusca, groupers, red mullets, common dentrex, sargos, sea bream, black seabream, megrims, greater amberjacks, cuttlefish, octopuses, moray eels and shrimp, among others. Some of the gear and tackle are modified to exploit the resources in depth, capturing sea bass, deepsea cardinalfish, oilfish and Abudefduf luridus.
Remember, the following is forbidden
- Any form of trawling.
- Fishing with gillnets, with the aforementioned exceptions.
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