Spatially explicit estimates of stock size, structure and biomass of North Atlantic albacore tuna (Thunnus alalunga) in the North Atlantic for the period 1956-2010, compiled from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas ...

• Main Authors: Lehodey, Patrick, Senina, Inna, Dragon, Anne-Cécile, Arrizabalaga, Haritz
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2014
• Subjects: Basin Scale Analysis, Synthesis and Integration EURO-BASIN; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.830797; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.830797

The development of the ecosystem approach and models for the management of ocean marine resources requires easy access to standard validated datasets of historical catch data for the main exploited species. They are used to measure the impact of biomass removal by fisheries and to evaluate the models skills, while the use of standard dataset facilitates models inter-comparison. North Atlantic albacore tuna is exploited all year round by longline and in summer and autumn by surface fisheries and fishery statistics compiled by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). Catch and effort with geographical coordinates at monthly spatial resolution of 1° or 5° squares were extracted for this species with a careful definition of fisheries and data screening. In total, thirteen fisheries were defined for the period 1956-2010, with fishing gears longline, troll, mid-water trawl and bait fishing. However, the spatialized catch effort data available in ICCAT database represent a ... : This work was funded in part by the European project EURO-BASIN, funded by Framework Programme 7 (Contract 264933). Special thanks to ICCAT for the access to its public fishing database and Carlos Palma (ICCAT) and Alain Fonteneau (IRD) for their helpful advice on these data. ...