SUSTAINABLE fishing sea trials involving Brixham fishermen have produced impressive results which could lead to a breakthrough in attempts to preserve fish stocks, it has been announced today.

Ten of the port's fishing boats have been taking part in a pilot project to reduce the number of discarded juvenile fish.

Beam trawler nets traditionally have a mesh size of at least 80mm which traps a high degree of unwanted catch which has no market value or is banned from being landed or sold by industry legislation.

By using bigger mesh nets to filter out unwanted catches, the fishing fleet in both Brixham and Plymouth have drastically slashed the amount of young fish caught by 57 per cent.

The sea trial initiative, nicknamed Project 58, was coordinated by scientists from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science , which has hailed the results as 'amazing'.

Dr Andy Revill, of Cefas, said: "We have been working to reduce discards with fishermen for a number of years, but it has been hard to achieve lasting results.

"I had read about social research methods and so approached Defra to fund this pilot project to see if this would help fishermen develop more sustainable practices for themselves.

"The starting point is to understand the lives and attitudes of Devon fishermen in detail so we could successfully work in partnership to achieve the desired results.

"Because we now have a much better understanding of what it's like to be a trawlerman and have built the project from the bottom up, the fishermen have achieved amazing results.

"They have been inspired by this approach and taken pride in what they have achieved."

Since using the bigger nets, Brixham skipper of Barentzee, Sean Gibbs, has reduced his unwanted catch by a whopping 63 per cent.

He is committed to continuing fishing with the bigger nets and says plans are in the pipeline to modify his trawler even further in a bid to cut his unwanted catch by 75 per cent.

"We don't want all the rubbish off the seabed coming up in our nets because the quality of fish goes down as it chafes it.

"Because the new nets are lighter, they cause less drag from the boat so less horsepower is used, which saves our fuel costs.

"It's the way forward. Everyone is on our backs about sustainable fishing and we can't fight against them because we will never win.

"If we want to keep the fishing industry alive we've got to work together. If the small stuff survives you've got a sustainable fishery."

Cefas hopes the bigger nets scheme will be widely adopted among Devon beam trawlers and fishing boats further afield.