In the present study, the efficiency of two alleged “seal safe” pingers; an experimental Banana pinger (abbreviated as SSB) and the Future oceans F70 pinger (abbreviated as FO), in deterring and reducing the bycatch of harbour porpoises in commercial cod and lumpfish gillnet fisheries was tested. In conclusion, video footage of the net haul on the fishing vessels were effective to verify the fishermen’s logbooks of bycaught harbour porpoises and seals, but not birds. Based on C-POD data, it was found that the FO pingers reduced porpoise presence in the vicinity of the gillnets significantly more than the SSB pingers, but both reduced the porpoise presence significantly more compared to gillnets without pingers. None of the two tested pingers significantly reduced the number of bycaught harbour porpoises in gillnets regardless of target species, compared to nets without pingers. However, this is likely a consequence of a having too low overall number of bycatches, and not to pinger inefficiency. Nevertheless, there were more bycatches in the SSB gillnets than in the FO gillnets. Even though porpoises detections in the vicinity of SSB gillnets were lower compared to nets without pingers, the porpoises apparently were not deterred enough to reduce bycatch. More trials need to be done with the SSB pinger to resolve possible technical limitations with this pinger.