by

• Main Author: Helle Siegstad
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Greenland; Cape Farewell; Denmark Strait; East Greenland; greenlandic; northern shrimp; Pandalus borealis
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.585.6059; http://archive.nafo.int/open/sc/2007/scr07-068.pdf

Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) occurs off East Greenland from Cape Farewell to about 70oN in depths down to about 800m. North of 65 oN the stock spans the adjacent Greenlandic and Icelandic economic zones. The stock is assessed as a single population by evaluation of fishery dependent data only. The stock is managed by catch quotas in the Greenlandic zone. There are no management related restrictions on the fishery in the Icelandic zone. A multinational fleet of large factory trawlers exploits the stock taking annual catches close to 12000 tons from 1994 to 2003. Catches decreased to 5107 tons in 2006 and preliminary data indicate that catches will stay at that level in 2007. A biomass index indicates that the stock decreased steadily from 1987 to 1993, but has show an increasing trend until beginning of the 2000s, and fluctuated at this level thereafter. Fishing mortality indices have decline since 1993 and recent levels are the lowest of the time series. Sampling of the commercial fishery in recent years has been insufficient to obtain annual estimates of catch composition. The status of the shrimp stock in Denmark Strait/off East Greenland indicates an increasing trend in the fishable biomass from 1993 to beginning of 2000s with stabilities thereafter. However, part of the fishing fleet has decreased their effort in recent years, which gives some uncertainty on whether recent values is a true reflection of the stock biomass.