Long-term survey strategy for deep-sea fish species in Norwegian waters … evaluation criteria and implications for survey outputs to advisory work

No abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author.

Deep-sea fish species are widely distributed within the Norwegian EEZ from the Barents Sea in the north, along the continental slope to the North Sea and the Norwegian trench in the south, as well as in the deep coastal fjords. To monitor these species, extensive survey coverage is thus required, and this has been achieved partly through dedicated surveys and partly by inclusion of deep sampling stations in multipurpose surveys. In an internal survey design project at Institute of Marine Research (IMR) a long-term survey strategy is devised by evaluation of outputs to assessment, management and research, and adapting an intuitive traffic-light approach in a systematic manner. A multi-annual survey strategy is developed and the implication of such strategy on survey cost, precision of survey indices and a potential for innovative research is analysed. The results are presented in detail in an available IMR report 1 referred to as “report” later on. Here a briefer summary of the results is presented.