The Nephrops fisheries of the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean - A review and assessment of fishing gear design

A review of the commercial trawl fisheries where Nephrops is a component of the catch was undertaken. These have considerable geographical coverage, ranging from Iceland to Portugal and into the Mediterranean. Nephrops is a highly important commercial species, valued at 208 million Euros (€) in 2001. The fisheries, with a few exceptions, are typi-cally multi-species, with the relative economic importance of Nephrops varying considerably between fisheries. Due to the smaller mesh size used in comparison to demersal fish fisheries, the degree of discarding of other species can be high. Additionally, due to the poor trawl selection characteristics, high grading, and legislative restrictions, the discard-ing of Nephrops is considerable in certain fisheries. A range of gear related technical measures are applied in order to mitigate discard levels, but further improvements are required. There is a lack of parameterised selectivity data for many of the existing technical measures, making any population independent assessment of their effectiveness impossi-ble. The report is divided into geographical areas and, for each of these, the fisheries are described, fleet adaptations to legislation are discussed and a review of the remedial measures that have been tested or applied is provided. Based on this information, fishery or area specific recommendations are made. In addition to the fishery specific recommenda-tions, more general recommendations are also given.