Ignoring discards biases the assessment of fisheries' ecological fingerprint.

Bycatch from a Perspective of Sustainable Use

Bycatch is an old fisheries problem, but a relatively new topic in fisheries management. The increased awareness is often credited to the growth of conservation movements, but also a more recent understanding – especially by the industry that marine resources are exhaustible, and that worldwide fishing efforts are excessive and threatening to marine stocks. The issue of bycatch and discards has...

Good news, bad news: global fisheries discards are declining, but so are total catches

During fishing operations, fish are often caught that were not targeted. When the species in question are of low value, or protected, this ‘by-catch’ is often thrown overboard as ‘discards’, the retained part of the catch constituting the landings. The amounts of fish discarded are generally highly areaand gear-specific, but can be high; for example, discards in tropical shrimp trawl fisheries ...

C. ASSESSMENT OF GOLDEN TILEFISH (Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps) in the Middle Atlantic-Southern New England Region A Report of the Southern Demersal Working Group National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fisheries Science Center

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Terms of Reference (TOR): 1. Characterize the commercial catch including landings and discards. Characterize recreational landings. This TOR was completed. See Section 2.0. 2. Estimate fishing mortality and total stock biomass for the current year and characterize the uncertainty of those estimates. 3. Evaluate and either update or re-estimate biological reference points as ap...

Recent Bayesian stable-isotope mixing models are highly sensitive to variation in discrimination factors.

Stable isotopes are now used widely in ecological studies, including diet reconstruction, where quantitative inferences about diet composition are derived from the use of mixing models. Recent Bayesian models (MixSIR, SIAR) allow users to incorporate variability in discrimination factors (delta13C or delta15N), or the amount of change in either delta13C or delta15N between prey and consumer, bu...

The problem of discards in fisheries