Fisheries Impacts on North Atlantic Ecosystems: Catch, Effort and National/Regional Data Sets
The French Fisheries in the North-east Atlantic (ICES Areas VII and VIII), 1996-1998
Michael Melnychuk1, Lyne Morissette1, Guy Fontenelle2, Yvon Morizur3, and Sylvie Guénette1
1 Fisheries Centre, 2204 Main Mall, University of British Columbia
2 Dept. Halieutique (Fisheries Science), Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique
3 DRV-RH, IFREMER, Centre de BrestAbstract
We present a brief summary of how French fisheries data are compiled, and compare landings data from the French national fishing institute (IFREMER) with ICES data. We noted discrepancies between the two sources that result from fish being caught in one area but landed and reported for another area. After ICES landing statistics by species were allocated to the various French fleets, we used discard rate estimates from three studies to estimate discards and reconstruct the catch of each species by fleet and area. We estimated that, on average, 18.1% of the catch in area VII and 21.0% in area VIII was discarded. Trawlers caught the majority of the total catch and had the highest discard rate of any fleet.