By Wahyu Teguh Prawira

KM.Artamina 3 is one of the longline vessels owned by PT.Artamina Tama that conducted the Circle hook Trial, accompanied by a onboard observer. This was the first time a longline trial was conducted among the various longline vessels in the new estuary in the hope of demonstrating to stakeholders there that the circle hook has a safer impact on endangered, threatened, and protected (ETP) bycatch, protected (ETP), namely reducing the mortality rate of ETP, especially turtles caught accidentally, and proving that the catch using circle hook is not inferior to J-hook and Tuna Hook.

During the trip to the fishing ground, the boat crew together with the observer make preparations for the fishing gear, namely measuring or cutting the fishing line, installing the fishing line, and arranging the fishing gear in a position ready for setting. Samsul Anwar (observer) assisted the crew in the technique of installing the circle hook on the branch line so that later the crew would not experience significant obstacles when setting and hauling because there are some special techniques for installing the circle hook that are different from tuna fishing rods and j-hooks in general. In this trial, circle hook was set intermittently with J-Hook to measure its effectiveness. In addition to assisting in the installation technique, the observer also gave an example of how to attach live bait to the circle hook so that the bait would not quickly die or be released when thrown into the sea.

In the first setting, 1350 fishing rods consisting of j-hooks and circle hooks were released, but due to concerns about reduced catches, in this first setting, only 100 pcs of #16, Ø13 size were installed out of a total of 1000pcs brought with the location around the Indian ocean waters.

After approximately 6-8 hours of fishing (hauling) at a steady boat speed, a medium-sized big eye tuna was caught. The observer identification results revealed the fish was caught on a circle hook. Besides tuna, there were also several non-target fish with economic value. The first day of setting and hauling the catch was still mostly dominated by J-hook as only 100 pcs of circle hook were set. Even so, most of the circle hooks deployed also got other target and non-target fishes and circle hook was also the opening tuna catch on the first day. The next setup used 500pcs of circle hooks and repeated setting and hauling, this setup on the captain's order resulted in the identification of most of the catches of target fish (tuna) and other non targets dominated by circle hook. This time, the tuna that had been caught by the J-Hook did not come off when pulled by the new crew, which is interesting because usually the tuna caught by the J-Hook will come off when pulled by the inexperienced new crew.

Circle hook Trial only uses 500pcs and there are still 500 pcs left that are not used for the reason of using live bait that should be installed using J-Hook also in order to avoid the company's assumption that the catch of this ship is small or decreasing not because of Circle hook or J-hook, everything is purely due to weather conditions and it is currently increasingly difficult to get fish in large quantities.

Related to bycacth ETP especially sea turtles, there are some turtles that are caught accidentally in a live state but some others are dead. From the results of the identification of observers, it turned out that the dead turtles were caught because they swallowed the bait attached to the J-hook, while the turtles that were still alive were only caught by the fishing line (C-Hook) on the mouth and outside of the body. The difference in size and shape between circle hook and J-hook is the main reason why circle hook is better and proven to reduce the mortality rate of ETP animals, especially sea turtles caught accidentally in fishing activities. Based on information obtained from observers and captains, as well as crew members, the results of the Circle hook trial show that the use of circle hook is considered more effective than J-hook. This is because in addition to being able to reduce the mortality rate of turtle ETP, the catch using circle hook is also able to match the catch when using J Hook.