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Energy, Climate change, Environment

Fishery Impacts

Objective

The objective is to apply existing Baltic Sea monitoring data and identify their adequacy for establishing time series data and GIS based data layers (gridded) to estimate the extent of fisheries impact on the sea floor, estimated by:

  • Area where bottom habitat has been disturbed by bottom trawling (number of disturbances per month)
  • Change in level of disturbance over the past ten years
  • Damage to the sea floor to both living and non-living components.

Relevant data for the target parameters (listed below) were gathered from EMODnet, HELCOM, ICES, STECF, and from (inter)national projects. Data of fishing effort and landings and of distribution of non-living and living components are available at different spatial and temporal scales.

The specific data required for this challenge include:

  • Historic time series (≥100 years) of fishing effort and area (landings weight by species and port of landing) from the History of Marine Animal Populations project website (www.hull.ac.uk/hmap)
  • Since 1978, time series of effort and landings from the national level by ICES area (sales slips data)
  • Since 1987, logbook data at the national level by ICES rectangle for vessels >10 m (and >8 m in the Baltic Sea basin)
  • Since 2005, VMS (Vessel Monitoring System) data at the national level for vessels larger than 15 m and since 2002, for vessels larger than 12 m
  • Fisheries information from additional open sources, such as HELCOM and STECF, from research projects (e.g. HOLAS, BENTHIS: www.benthis.eu), from OSPAR special requests and other literature
  • GIS data of non-living components, including spatial distribution of the Baltic Sea Marine Landscapes (from the BALANCE project: www.balance-eu.org), and additional geo-chemical elements (e.g. bottom salinity, sea floor sediment types, detailed bathymetry) from EMODnet, HELCOM and ICES
  • GIS data of living components, including spatial distribution the EUNIS classified Habitats and NATURA 2000 protected nature types and species (flora and fauna) from EDMONET and (inter)national databases
  • Information of potential damage to non-living and living components of the sea floor from the scientific literature and other sources.

Furthermore, the outcome of the literature survey (Work Package 1) was used; e.g. to inform definitions of terminology and identify specific key data sets that should be used.

 

Participants

 

Technical University of Denmark - Aqua