Bottom Longline

A bottom longline is a static gear consisting of a groundline anchored to the seabed with many baited hooks on short snoods, set to catch demersal species such as cod, hake, ling, and toothfish. It is more selective and less habitat-damaging than bottom trawling because it makes no continuous seabed contact, but it carries seabird bycatch risk during setting and can hook benthic sharks. CCAMLR mandates streamer lines, night setting, and line weighting on Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish longlines to keep seabird mortality near zero, and similar mitigation appears in many national demersal longline plans.