Fisheries Impacts on North Atlantic Ecosystems: Catch, Effort and National/Regional Data Sets
Portuguese Fisheries in Portugal for the Period 1950-1999: Comparison with ICES data
Louize Hill and Maria Lucilia Coelho
Portuguese Fisheries and Sea Research InstituteAbstract
The Portuguese fishery in Portugal waters landed its greatest catches in the mid 1960s, and landings have remained lower but steady since then. Purse seines, targeting sardines (Sardina pilchardus), had the highest catches of all fisheries from 1950-1999. Fish and cephalopod trawls, crustacean trawls, and multi-gear vessels form the remaining fleets. During the 1990s, both the catch and value of most target species decreased slightly (except for octopus), due to decreasing fleet sizes in all fisheries. Official Portuguese catch statistics are compatible with ICES landing figures since the late 1980s. Prior to this period, Portuguese catch statistics are approximately 18% lower. We assume Portuguese discard rates are low. The Portuguese fishery is dominated by purse seines, which generally have low discard rates. This contrasts with Spanish fishery, which has a greater trawling fleet and is thus more likely to produce higher discard rates. Surprisingly, the biomass of shark discards in Portuguese fishery is probably quite high, as they form a substantial proportion of the trawling fisheries catches, and are nearly always discarded.