ICES 2005/Theme Session N ICES CM 2005/N:16 The potential impact of commercial fishing activity on the ecology of deepwater chondrichthyans from the west of Scotland
Since the 1970s the deepwater shelf edge habitat west of the British Isles has been targeted by commercial fishers. The fishery is aimed at teleosts such as ling, black scabbardfish and roundnose grenadier. A smaller component of the catch is, however, composed of Chondrichthyes, i.e. the elasmobranchs (skates & rays) and holocephalans (chimaeras). Until the early 1990s these were discarded, but now they are either actively targeted or retained as by-catch and landed for human consumption. Elasmobranchs are particularly sensitive to high harvesting levels because of slow growth rates, high longevity and low fecundity. A recent combined assessment by ICES of the two most important commercial species, Centroscymnus coelolepis and Centrophorus squamosus indicated drastic decline to less than 50% original biomass. However, landings data are unreliable and fisheries independent, species-specific data that might be used to quantify the effects of fishing in these areas are sparse because of the technological challenges and expense involved in fishing to these depths. In this study, data from scientific deepwater trawl surveys collected by FRS Marine Laboratory were carried out from 1998-2004 and interrogated. These data were examined for any evidence of a decline in abundance and compared with published data from MAFF surveys in the same region between [1970][1971][1972][1973][1974][1975][1976][1977][1978]. Despite the short time series there were indications of declining trends in CPUE for a number of Squaliformes between 1998 and 2004 and the overall catch rates of sharks are dramatically lower than those recorded from pre-exploitation surveys in the 1970s. These results highlight the need to continue fisheries-independent surveys of this vulnerable ecosystem
