International audienceMarine recreational fishing (MRF) is a high-participation activity with large economic value and social benefits globally, and it impacts on some fish stocks. Although reporting MRF catches is a European Union legislative requirement, estimates are only available for some countries. Here, data on numbers of fishers, participation rates, days fished, expenditures, and catches of two widely targeted species were synthesized to provide European estimates of MRF and placed in the global context. Uncertainty assessment was not possible due to incomplete knowledge of error distributions; instead, a semi-quantitative bias assessment was made. There were an estimated 8.7 million European recreational sea fishers corresponding to a participation rate of 1.6%. An estimated 77.6 million days were fished, and expenditure was €5.9 billion annually. There were higher participation, numbers of fishers, days fished and expenditure in the Atlantic than the Mediterranean, but the Mediterranean estimates were generally less robust. Comparisons with other regions showed that European MRF participation rates and expenditure were in the mid-range, with higher participation in Oceania and the United States, higher expenditure in the United States, and lower participation and expenditure in South America and Africa. For both northern European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax, Moronidae) and western Baltic cod (Gadus morhua, Gadidae) stocks, MRF represented 27% of the total removals. This study highlights the importance of MRF and the need for bespoke, regular and statistically sound data collection to underpin European fisheries management. Solutions are proposed for future MRF data collection in Europe and other regions to support sustainable fisheries management

No abstract

No abstract

Using individually coded acoustic transponders and an array of 15 moored receivers (detection range ~300 m), the temporal and spatial movements of the temperate snapper Pagrus auratus (Sparidae) were studied within an estuary. Of the 28 fish initially tagged, 20 were subsequently detected within the study area for up to 70 days. The spatial scale of daily movements was in the order of hundreds of metres for most fish, suggesting relatively restricted home ranges over the period monitored (November–January). The detectability of fish remaining in the estuary was lower at night, probably because of fish moving out of the main channel and onto surrounding shallow banks during darkness. Temporal movement patterns detected using spectral analyses (Fast Fourier Transforms) were predominantly diurnal, with subordinate tidal behaviour also evident in some fish. These results demonstrate that in this system, snapper occupy relatively small (hundreds of metres) and discrete areas of soft sediment seafloor, within which repeated, predictable movements are made. Variability among fish has highlighted the need for a better understanding of the relationship between fish behaviour and fine-scale habitat features (metres).

Fisheries managers are becoming increasingly aware of the need to quantify all forms of harvest, including that by recreational fishers. This need has been driven by both a growing recognition of the potential impact that noncommercial fishers can have on exploited resources and the requirement to allocate catch limits between different sectors of the wider fishing community in many jurisdictions. Marine recreational fishers are rarely required to report any of their activity, and some form of survey technique is usually required to estimate levels of recreational catch and effort. In this review, we describe and discuss studies that have attempted to estimate the nature and extent of recreational harvests of marine fishes in New Zealand and Australia over the past 20 years. We compare studies