SEAwise report on the bycatch mortality risk of potentially endangered and threatened species of fish, seabirds, reptiles and mammals

• Main Authors: Amaia Astarloa, Maite Louzao, Isabel García-Barón, Joanna K. Bluemel, Elena Couce, Pierluigi Carbonara, Giovanni Romagnoni, Cosmidano Neglia, Walter Zupa, Isabella Bitetto, Maria-Teresa Spedicato, Lotte Kindt-Larsen, Gildas Glemarec, David Lusseau, Irida Maina, Archontia Chatzispyrou, Nikolaos Fotiadis, Stefanos Kavadas, Evgenia Lefkaditou, Celia Vassilopoulou, Luke Batts, David Reid, Patricia Breen, Bernhard Kuehn, Jonas Letschert, Alexander Kempf, Marc Taylor, Simon Northridge, J.J., Nana Afranewaa, Anna Rindorf
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Conservation and biodiversity; Environmental assessment and monitoring; Environmental management; Natural resource management; Wildlife and habitat management; Fisheries bycatch; Protected; threatened and endangered species; Biodiversity; Fisheries management; Sustainable fisheries; Harbour porpoise; Phocoena phocoena
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.11583/dtu.25041257.v1; https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/SEAwise_report_on_the_bycatch_mortality_risk_of_potentially_endangered_and_threatened_species_of_fish_seabirds_reptiles_and_mammals/25041257

The SEAwise project works to deliver a fully operational tool that will allow fishers, managers, and policy makers to easily apply Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) in their fisheries and bycatch of protected, endangered and threatened (PET) species is a major concern in EBFM implementation. This SEAwise report evaluates the effects of fishing on bycatch of PET species by applying a hierarchical framework that moves from qualitative to quantitative methodologies depending on species vulnerability to bycatch and data availability. By these means, this work identifies current areas of highest bycatch risk across the case studies and assesses the sustainability of bycatch levels on PET populations. The first step of this report consisted of the application of the semi-quantitative Productivity-Susceptibility Analysis (PSA) to a wide range of sensitive species across European waters, including cetaceans, bony and cartilaginous fishes and a single seabird species. PSA measures the risk of a species to over-exploitation by a fishery based on two properties; productivity, defined by the life history characteristics determining the intrinsic rate of population increase, and susceptibility, based on the interactions between population and fishing dynamics. This analysis scores species’ productivity and susceptibility attributes from 1 (low risk) to 3 (high risk) for each fishery or gear of interest, allowing a rapid screening of the species most likely affected by bycatch. Cetaceans were assessed in the Bay of Biscay and Irish waters, and in both cases, gillnets were identified as the gears with the highest bycatch risk, especially for common dolphin ( Delphinus delphis) and harbour porpoise ( Phocoena phocoena) . Cartilaginous fishes were assessed in the Mediterranean Sea, including pelagic species such as the blue shark ( Prionace glauca ) and demersal species such as the longnose spurgod ( Squalus blainville) , the bull ray (Aetomylaeus bovinus) and the common smooth-hound ( Mustelus mustelus) . The blue ...