Biodiversity in the by-catch communities of the pelagic ecosystem in the Western Indian Ocean

Biodiversity and Habitat Characteristics of the Bycatch Assemblages in Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) and School Sets in the Eastern Pacific Ocean

“…Data recorded by observers include information about the trip and fishing activities (set type, position of the set, day and hour of the set), and the capture of the bycatch in biomass or number for the different species groups (Lezama-Ochoa et al, 2015). In this study, the numbers of individuals were used to perform the analysis.…”

“…Bycatch species groups were divided in billfishes, bonyfishes, sharks, rays, turtles and marine mammals. Bycatch was identified to species level in general and to genus or family level in some cases (see "Selection of taxonomic categories" section) (Lezama-Ochoa et al, 2015).…”

“…In the case of high level taxa records (genus, family, order and other levels), the distribution of species and their abundance was assigned based on the species composition for the same group (e.g., genus, family) in the same area (Lezama-Ochoa et al, 2015) for one particular year. As species level identification for the Families Belonidae, Diodotidae and Myliobatidae, and the Genus Sphyraena were not possible, they were considered as morphospecies -taxa that are distinguishable on the basis of the morphology (Oliver and Beattie, 1996)-and treated as species in species richness estimates (Lezama-Ochoa et al, 2015).…”

“…As species level identification for the Families Belonidae, Diodotidae and Myliobatidae, and the Genus Sphyraena were not possible, they were considered as morphospecies -taxa that are distinguishable on the basis of the morphology (Oliver and Beattie, 1996)-and treated as species in species richness estimates (Lezama-Ochoa et al, 2015). The list of species selected comprised a total of 72 species (6 billfish species, 20 sharks, 34 bony-fishes, 4 turtles and 8 species of rays).…”

“…Some literature has been published about the biology and habitat characteristics of the tuna and bycatch species in the eastern Pacific Ocean (Olson et al, 2010(Olson et al, , 2014Scott et al, 2012;Duffy et al, 2015). Moreover, tropical tuna purse seine fishery observer data has been used recently to study bycatch species diversity and community structure in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in different type of sets (TorresIrineo et al, 2014;Lezama-Ochoa et al, 2015); but not yet in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Understanding the habitat and diversity patterns of these species in the eastern tropical Pacific is essential for the development of future manage strategies to mitigate the effect of purse seiner in the bycatch communities.…”