EU request for a Technical Service to provide catch statistics for skates and rays caught in ICES areas 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 included in the SRX TAC group

ICES provides, as a technical service, landings statistics for skates and rays caught in ICES areas 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 for the years 2017–2020. Discards data are restricted to a few stocks for which reliable estimates are available.

This technical service is based on landings data for all species of skates and rays reported to ICES by national data providers and consolidated by the ICES Working Group on Elasmobranch Fishes (WGEF) for the years 2017–2020.

Data for 2021 are not yet available to ICES. National data will be delivered as part of the ICES data call in support of the ICES fisheries advice in 2022 later in the year and will be analysed by WGEF in June 2022.

Discards data are highly uncertain for elasmobranchs. However, discard data is provided for stocks currently involved in a benchmarking process (WKELASMO; ICES, 2022) or when discards are used in the advice for a given stock (rjc.27.8, rjn.27.678abd, rjn.27.8c, rjn.27.9a, rju.27.7de, and rju.27.8ab).

The electronic data outputs of this technical service can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.data.19619754