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Catch and yield trends of the Portuguese purse seine fishery (2006-2018)

Diana Feijó1*, Ana Marçalo2, Laura Wise1, Tiago Bento1, Jorge Barra1, Mário Correira1, Daniel Pinto1, Rubén M. Lechuga1, Inês Dias3, Mónica Felício1, David Dinis1, Mónica Inácio1, Diana Pereira1, Paula Abreu1, Neide Lagarto1, Catarina Maia1, Pedro Gomes1, Ana L. Ferreira1, Dina Silva1, Antonio Fernandes1, Mário Pedro1, Carlos Barbosa1, Pedro Lino1, Jose L. Sofia1, Tibério Simões1 and Alexandra A. Silva1, 4
  • 1 Portuguese Institute of Ocean and Atmosphere (IPMA), Portugal
  • 2 Centre of Marine Sciences, University of Algarve, Portugal
  • 3 Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal
  • 4 Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences (MARE), Portugal

The purse seine fishery is one of the most important fisheries in Portugal, accounting for about 50% of landings in weight. Historically, the sardine (Sardina pilchardus) is the target species of the purse seine fleet. However, with the decline of the sardine stock and the reduction of annual quotas, this fleet has supplemented its yields by capturing other pelagic species such as chub-mackerel (Scomber colias), horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus) and anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus). This work aims to investigate changes in the purse seine fleet activity and catch and landings compositions associated with the decline of sardine, including inter-annual variations of fishing effort, catch, landings and slipping compositions, using on-board observations from 2006 to 2018. The Portuguese mainland coast was split in three main areas: North, Centre and South (from Viana do Castelo to Olhão, as describe in Feijó et al., 2018). During the study period (2006-2018), the observers were trained to follow the same standard protocol (Feijó et al., 2012) on-board commercial vessels (Length-overall >16 m). Most trips were carried out within the framework of PNAB/EU-DCF. Since 2010 and in the ports of Peniche, Olhão and Portimão, 80 trips were performed within the scope of SAFESEA and Life+MARPRO projects (Marçalo et al., 2015). Data were collected on fishing set characteristics (number, depth, geographic position), fishing activities (trip total duration and time spent in steaming, searching, fishing and resting as described in Feijó, 2013) and catch compositions (total biomass and species composition for retained, slipped and discarded catch). Each net deployment was counted as a fishing set. Between 2006-2018, more than 400 trips and 450 sets were recorded, corresponding to 0.5% of the total fleet effort (Silva et al., 2015). On-board observation work was carried out in more than half of the national fleet. Fishing occurred throughout the year but effort decreased between November and April due to voluntary area closures (in the North and Centre areas, fishing stops in February and March), sardine ban restrictions (2012-2018) and bad weather conditions. In earlier years, most trips were around 9h long with one to two sets observed. During the study period, there was an increase in the number of sets (3-4 sets) performed and time dedicated to searching in order to obtain the same catch and yields. Sardine catches and landings declined mostly due to quota restrictions, and were compensated by the increase of chub mackerel catches and landings. Changes in the target species were also observed although sardine was still the main species captured. In the 2017 and 2018, an increase in anchovy catches and landings was also observed. The reduction of annual quotas and establishment of daily limit quotas led to the increase of slipping, creating the differences between catches and landings. We observed behavior changes in the fleet along the country, such as a search for new fishing grounds and species with more market value. Our results are of interest to stakeholders as they provide a perception of changes in the fishery at the national and regional level.

Acknowledgements

We thank all skippers and crewmembers and the purse-seine’ Producer Organizations (PO) for contributing with their knowledge and welcoming all the observers aboard. We are grateful to DGRM for providing the data on daily landings. This work received funds from European Commission’s Data Collection Framework - PNAB/EU-DCF (Programa Nacional de Amostragem Biológica), Projects SAFESEA EEA Grants (2008–2010) and Life + MarPro (2011–2015). AM had a postdoctoral grant from FCT (SFRH/BPD/64889/2009).

References

Feijó, D., 2013. Caracterização da pesca de cerco na costa Portuguesa. Tese de Mestrado, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Porto, p. 93. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.3102.4241. Feijó, D., Marçalo, A., Wise, L., Silva, A., 2012. Protocolo de Amostragem a Bordo da Pesca do Cerco. Relat. Cient. Téc. IPIMAR, Série digital no 57, 11p X Anexos. https://www.ipma.pt/resources.www/docs/publicacoes.site/docweb/ 2012/Reln57final.pdf. Feijó, D., Marçalo, A., Bento T., Barra J., Marujo D., Correia M., Silva, A., 2018. Trends in the activity pattern, fishing yields, catch and landing composition between 2009 and 2013 from onboard observations in the Portuguese purse seine fleet. Regional Studies in Marine Science, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsma.2017.12.007. Marçalo, A., Katara, I., Feijó, D., Araújo, H., Oliveira, I., Santos, J., Ferreira, M., Monteiro S, Pierce, G.J., Silva, A., Vingada, J., 2015. Quantification of interactions between the Portuguese sardine purse-seine fishery and cetaceans. ICES J. Marine Sci. 72 (8), 2438–2449. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsv076. R Core Team (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/. Silva, A., Moreno, A., Rivero, I., Santos, B., Pita, C., Rodrigues, G., Villasante, S., Pawlowski, L., Duhamel, E., 2015. Sardine Fisheries: Resource assessment and social and economic situation. Directorate-General for Internal Policies, Policy Department B: Structural and Cohesion Policies. European Parliament. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2015/563412/IPOL_STU(2015)563412_ENpdf.

Keywords: Purse seine, Catches and landings, Slipping, Sardine (Sardina pilchardus), Chub mackerel (Scomber colias)

Conference: XX Iberian Symposium on Marine Biology Studies (SIEBM XX) , Braga, Portugal, 9 Sep - 12 Sep, 2019.

Presentation Type: Poster Presentation

Topic: Fisheries, Aquaculture and Biotechnology

Citation: Feijó D, Marçalo A, Wise L, Bento T, Barra J, Correira M, Pinto D, Lechuga RM, Dias I, Felício M, Dinis D, Inácio M, Pereira D, Abreu P, Lagarto N, Maia C, Gomes P, Ferreira AL, Silva D, Fernandes A, Pedro M, Barbosa C, Lino P, Sofia JL, Simões T and Silva AA (2019). Catch and yield trends of the Portuguese purse seine fishery (2006-2018). Front. Mar. Sci. Conference Abstract: XX Iberian Symposium on Marine Biology Studies (SIEBM XX) . doi: 10.3389/conf.fmars.2019.08.00013

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Received: 27 Jun 2019; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019.

* Correspondence: Mx. Diana Feijó, Portuguese Institute of Ocean and Atmosphere (IPMA), Lisbon, Portugal, dfeijo@ipma.pt