Records of some rare deep-sea fishes caught in the Lion, Susan, and Unicorn seamounts, off the archipelago of Madeira (east-central Atlantic)

Abstract

. 2017. Records of some rare deep-sea fishes caught in the Lion, Susan, and Unicorn seamounts, off the archipelago of Madeira (east-central Atlantic). Acta Ichthyol. Piscat. 47 (1): 91-96.Abstract. Fish communities off the seamounts inside the Madeira exclusive economic zone are scarcely known, hence the need to improve this knowledge. A bottom trawl fishing survey targeting orange roughy, Hoplostethus atlanticus Collett, 1889, was carried out on the Lion, Susan, and Unicorn seamounts in the autumn of 2001. The aim of this paper is to give an account of the catches of that survey, during which 9 tows were conducted and 21 deep-sea fish species caught, including species rarely caught. A growing interest emerged, in the last decades of the 20th century, in the development of the exploitation of deep-sea species (Merret and Haedrich 1997). During this period, commercial fishing has greatly increased the fishing effort directed to seamount-aggregated species like the orange roughy, Hoplostethus atlanticus Collett, 1889, oreos (Oreosomatidae), and alfonsinos (Beryx spp.) (see Koslow et al. 2000, Morato and. Although the seamount-related fisheries represent nowadays a high stake of the world deep-water fish catches, seamount research has mostly followed fisheries exploitation. Seamounts are still poorly understood habitats, among other issues concerning the living communities they support (Brewin et al. 2007).There is also a lack of knowledge about the life history of seamount fishes, with the majority of studies focusing on the main commercial species. Contributions on these issues are particularly important considering that seamount species, and particularly seamount-aggregating species, are more vulnerable to overfishing than other deep-sea species .Before the establishment of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in 1977, some 10 seamounts around the archipelagos of Madeira and Canaries were exploited by fishermen. The fishing gear used were mostly pelagic trawl, less frequently bottom trawl and seine. These fisheries continued intermittently after that date in the seamounts

Morphometric description and biological notes on the rare kitefin shark Dalatias licha (Chondrichthyes: Dalatidae) from the Hellenic waters

“…Off Algeria and Tunisia, D. licha reached a maximum size of 1170 and 390 mm L T , respectively, among the 47 specimens collected over a 10 year period between 200 and 600 m of depth (Capapé et al ., 2008). In the Gulf of Lions, a specimen of 1320 mm L T was caught at a mean tow depth of 1045 m (Delgado et al ., 2017). From the Gulf of Lions to the Catalan Sea, 37 specimens were collected between 208 and 1090 mm L T during a 22 month period at depths reaching 2200 m (Barría et al ., 2015).…”

Review of the Diversity, Ecology, and Conservation of Elasmobranchs in the Azores Region, Mid-North Atlantic

“…(Floeter et al, 2008) and owing to the few highlymigratory species shared between these sections of the North Atlantic. Species lists of the other regions were adapted from regional annotated checklists (Brito et al, 2002;Wirtz et al, 2008;Wirtz, 2011) and recently published literature [Freitas and Biscoito, 2007;Ferreira et al, 2008;Freitas et al, 2011;Kyne et al, 2012 (only species from NWA); Ebert and Stehmann, 2013;Delgado et al, 2017], augmented by local expert knowledge where possible (P. Pascual IEO/Canaries, pers. comm.…”