Fisheries Impacts on North Atlantic Ecosystems: Catch, Effort and National/Regional Data Sets
The Sea Around Icelanders: Catch history and discards in Icelandic Waters
Hreiðar Þór Valtýsson
The Marine Research Institute, University of AkureyriAbstract
This paper aims to give and overview of the fisheries 'around Icelanders' and explains the methods involved in constructing a database on these fisheries. This refers to fisheries 'around Icelanders' because information is given both for fisheries of all countries in the waters around Iceland and for fisheries conducted by Icelandic boats in distant waters. The introductory section will include and overview of these fisheries, descriptions of the fishing grounds, a history of fisheries management in Icelandic waters and a description of the sources of data used to reconstruct the catch and effort database. The second section introduces the fishing fleets operating in Icelandic waters. Icelandic fleets are discussed by fishing gear and foreign fleets by country. Information on how the effort history was reconstructed and information on the engine power of the Icelandic fleet is also included in this section. Reconstruction of catch history and discard estimates is explained in the third section, which also includes a brief summary of all species harvested in Icelandic waters. Finally, some primary results and a discussion are presented.