Samenvatting

Electric pulse fishing is a very promising and innovative solution instead of using tickler chains such as beam trawling, to enable the catch flat fish. Bottom-trawling activities on the marine ecosystem cause the scrape of the surface or dig into the seabed. The penetration of the gears produce the vulnerability of benthic species (G.J. Piet, 2000). A private Dutch company called Verburg-Holland Ltd in the 1990s took the development of pulse trawling (T. Haasnoot, 2016). During this period, the European Scientific Journal raised many questions about ecosystem effects of introducing electric pulse trawling. In January 2018, a non-profit French organization stated in the EU Parliament the negative effects that this technique has (BLOOM, 2017). As a result, the EU parliament decided to ban electric pulse fishing in order to guarantee the size of fish that may be caught, restricting fishing in certain areas or certain seasons (EU parliament, 2018). Therefore, the main goal of this research is to evaluate the effects that electric pulse fishing has on the benthic ecosystem with a focus on the lugworm, Arenicola marina. Based on the results collected, it can be concluded that electrical pulses decrease behavioral activity, producing a fatigue on A. marina after repetitive pulses in the same day. However, these effects show a low level of long-term impact on this species.