Total marine fishery catch for the Azores (1950–2010)

Abstract

Pham, C. K., Canha, A., Diogo, H., Pereira, J. G., Prieto, R., and Morato, T. 2013. Total marine fishery catch for the Azores (1950–2010). – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 564–577. Official fishery statistics often fail to report what has been truly extracted from the marine environment. Therefore, in this study, we estimated illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) catch in the context of a small-scale fishery (the Azores) and provide an improved compilation of official catches, including whaling. Reconstructed removals during 1950–2010 total 1.10 million t (95% CI, 1.06–1.16 million t), a factor of 1.17 higher than the amount reported in Azorean official statistics. Unreported catches were attributed to foreign fishing activities (27%), recreational fishing (25%), discards from the demersal fishing fleet (21%), baitfish for the pole-and-line tuna fishery (11%), discards from pelagic longlining (7%), local pelagic fleet landing outside the Azores (3%), coastal invertebrate harvesting (6%), and big-game fishing (0.1%). The overall low level of unreported catches compared to other locations might reflect the small-scale nature of the fisheries, the geographic isolation of the islands, and the small size of its community.

Unreported catch and tourist demand on local fisheries of small island states: the case of The Bahamas, 1950–2010

“…The magnitude of the discrepancy between our reconstructed estimate and officially reported statistics is comparable to results from reconstruction studies of the fisheries of other small island nations, findings that ranged from a 1.2-fold difference in the case of the Azores (1950Pham et al, 2013) to an average 2.5-fold difference for 25 Pacific island countries and territories (Zeller et al, 2015).…”

“…Although recreational catches can exceed commercial landings for some marine fish populations (e.g., see Schroeder and Love, 2002;Coleman et al, 2004), it is rare for recreational catches to dominate reconstructed estimates, as they do for The Bahamas. In comparison, recreational catches accounted for only 3% and 25% of total removals in reconstruction studies of marine fisheries in the Baltic Sea (1950Zeller et al, 2011b) and the Azores (1950Pham et al, 2013), respectively. Yet, despite their significance, recreational catches remain unaccounted for in The Bahamas, as in most other parts of the world, but Freire et al (in press) is using the reconstruction process to estimate catches from marine recreational fisheries for 126 countries and territories.…”

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

“…Our results show that, within the local fishery, reported landings of blue shark can be 20 times higher than landings of other species by weight. These results do not consider the discard or unreported landings, estimated to be up to 80% more than reported landings (Pham et al, 2013).…”

“…also do not appear in the landing records, however is locally the most abundant elasmobranch genus in fishing surveys (Wenneck et al, 2008;Menezes, 2014). Current discard estimates calculate that around 300 mt of this species group is discarded for every 10 kg recorded in landings (Pham et al, 2013). Evidence suggests that lanternshark species are declining due to commercial fishing in Southern Portugal, where they are frequently discarded as well (Coelho, 2007).…”

“…Despite the cautious nature of the local fishery, foreign pelagic longline vessels from Portuguese mainland and the EU operate unsupervised within the EEZ. These vessels land directly in mainland ports, without reporting Azorean catches to regional authorities (Pham et al, 2013). At the local scale, fishing activity is mostly concentrated around island slopes and seamounts (Pinho and Menezes, 2009), exposing non-target species with higher vulnerability to fisheries pressure (Morato et al, 2006).…”