Fisheries Impacts on North Atlantic Ecosystems: Catch, Effort and National/Regional Data Sets
Key Features of Commercial and Recreational Fisheries Statistics from the US Atlantic Coast
Teresa Ryan, Reg Watson and Daniel Pauly
Fisheries Centre, University of British ColumbiaAbstract
This contribution briefly describes the major features of the database of fisheries catches from the Eastern USA, from Maine in the North to the tip of the Florida peninsula in the South, i.e., excluding the Gulf of Mexico. The two major databases for commercial and recreational catches created by the National Marine Fisheries Service are described, along with a number of related efforts both at Federal and States’ level. Also, some of the scattered contributions devoted to estimating discards, and misreported catches are discussed, with emphasis on their potential by the Sea Around Us project for generating highresolution catch maps.