Nysted Hajkutter Festival & Regatta (link) is a yearly 5 days cultural event in my small hometown Nysted in the early August each year, ending with the Nysted - Rostock Hajkutter Regatta, which is one of the official prologues to one of the major sailing event for traditional sail ships in Germany "Hanse Sail" (link) in the harbour city Rostock. This year around 125 paying tour passengers was joining the regatta on-board the most of the participating Hajkutters. There are links to the homepages of each single Hajkutter under the pictures of the Hajkutters.

But what is a Hajkutter or in German Haikutter??? The Hajkutters are special Danish fishing ketches build from 1880 to 1950, and were among the first fishing ships with a mechanical helping motor. The Hajkutters were originally specially developed for the "Snurrevod" (Danish Seine) fishing method. The name Haj/Hai means shark, and they got this name from other fishers, because the Hajkutters were very efficient fishing ships, since they were faster to use, both during the sailing to the fishing banks and during the fishing.

The "Snurrevod" (Danish Seine) fishing method is a more environmental friendly fishing method compared to trawl fishing, but not as efficient. The Danish Seine fishing method is still used around the whole world. The Danish Seine is a seine with two ropes called arms, and each arm can be up to a length of 3500m (3800yd). When the ship arrives to the fishing area, a large anchor is laid out with one of the seine ropes attached and a buoy to mark the place. The ship sails along the fishing area laying out the seine rope, turns 110° and the light seine is laid out, turns 110° again and sails back to the buoy laying out the second seine rope which forms a triangle around the fishing area. The two seine ropes and the seine fall to the bottom and are pulled in with a power winch placed amidship and the ship is held in place by the anchor. The fish are herded into the path of the seine by the seine ropes, which gently stir up a mud cloud. This gentle fishing metod results in dramatically less buttom degration than trawling and is more fuel efficient. You can read more about this fishing method at wikispaces.com (Danish), fish.gov.au (English), or montereyfish.com (English)

The pictures in this web gallery are downsized to 1400x937 pixels and can be downloaded for personal use at my rapidshare account (link zip file 35MB), or you can download the full size JPG pictures here (link zip file 228MB)