Spain (Mediterranean and Gulf of Cadiz): catch reconstruction update to 2018

Abstract

This contribution updates to 2018 a reconstruction of the catches of the Spanish marine fisheries in the Mediterranean (excluding the Balearic Islands) and the Gulf of Cadiz region (i.e., in the Atlantic) that initially covered the years 1950 to 2010. One major issue in this update was the absence of fishing gear information for catch per taxon. To overcome this limitation, datasets from autonomous communities within the two regions were used to estimate the taxon proportions of catch taken by each fishing gear. The other major issue is that we used official landings for the Gulf of Cadiz region from 1985-1999 that were not available for the initial reconstruction to retroactively update catch from 1985-2009 for the Gulf of Cadiz. Assumptions for the reconstruction are explicitly stated in the description below