Deep Species Results from Spanish Discard Sampling Programme

• Main Authors: Santos J, I. Salinas
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Discards; Northeast Atlantic waters; Bottom Trawl; Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1033.7761; http://www.repositorio.ieo.es/e-ieo/bitstream/handle/10508/3650/Santos,%20J.%20et%20al.%202011.%20Deep.pdf%3Bjsessionid%3DFE72C26E0DC2C1EC364E350D92E21CC0?sequence%3D1

Estimations of deep species discards from three Spanish bottom otter trawl métiers operating in the Northeast Atlantic ICES V I, V II, V IIIc and North IXa are presented in this paper. Information has been ob-tained from the ‘Spanish Discard Sampling Programme ’ carried out by the IEO. Trip was the sampling unit, being raised to fleet level using fish-ing effort as auxiliary variable. Discard weigth estimates from time series of seven years (2003-2009) is presented for twelve species. Further, dis-card length distributions are presented for those species that have been observed whitin discarded fraction for more than three years. Estimates show high between-years variation in discard amounts, exceeding 35 % CV in almost all cases. Results show that the largest amounts of discards of most of the species occur at depths less than 600m. Low market value is the main factor that forces the fleet to discard most of deep species.