Footprints in the sand: a persistent spatial impression of fishing in a mobile groundfish assemblage

Fishing is well known to curtail the size distribution of fish populations. This paper reports the discovery of small-scale spatial patterns in length appearing in several exploited species of Celtic Sea demersal 'groundfish'. These patterns match well with spatial distributions of fishing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Marine Biology
Main Authors: de Castro, Francisco, Shephard, Samuel, Kraak, Sarah B. M., Reid, David G., Farnsworth, Keith D.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2015
Subjects:
MARINE PROTECTED AREAS
COD GADUS-MORHUA
ATLANTIC COD
NORTH-SEA
TAGGING EXPERIMENTS
MOVEMENTS
POPULATION
MANAGEMENT
CATCHABILITY
MIGRATION
/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/life_below_water
name=SDG 14 - Life Below Water
atlantic cod
Gadus morhua
Online Access:https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/bc5a18f8-068b-4eef-ae86-b7d984055aea
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-015-2665-1
http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84938092879&partnerID=8YFLogxK
Description
Summary:Fishing is well known to curtail the size distribution of fish populations. This paper reports the discovery of small-scale spatial patterns in length appearing in several exploited species of Celtic Sea demersal 'groundfish'. These patterns match well with spatial distributions of fishing activity, estimated from vessel monitoring records taken over a period of 6 years, suggesting that this 'mobile' fish community retains a persistent impression of local-scale fishing pressure. An individual random-walk model of fish movement best matched these exploitation 'footprints' with individual movement rates set to <35 km per year. We propose that Celtic Sea groundfish may have surprisingly low movement rates for much of the year, such that fishing impact is spatially heterogeneous and related to local fishing intensity.

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