PhD Studentships: Integration of Sea Angling Associated Catch and Mortality for Stock Assessment

Graham Monkman

University of Bangor & CEFAS

There are c. 1 million recreational sea anglers (RSA) in the UK, spending annually over £1.2 billion and their removals of marine fish can be quantitatively comparable to commercial landings, as revealed by landings of the European sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax. Hence angling removals should be included in stock assessments and fisheries management, accounting for catch and release and post-release mortality rates.

RSA catch has only been included in stock assessments of Baltic cod; a gap recognised by the European Commission, and in the Common Fisheries Policy that requires members to report on catches by RSA for some species to give a clearer picture of how fishing affects stocks. RSA data on commercially significant species are also required at a local level under the Marine and Coastal Access Act to provide an evidence-base when balancing the needs of marine environment users. However, national RSA assessments are expensive and complex, especially in the UK where sea angling is unlicensed, so there is little evidence to inform the development of a policy for UK sea angling despite the sector’s importance.

My research will seek to scope, develop and validate transferable, innovative techniques in the capture of RSA data on marine fish species of recreational and commercial importance, primarily within ICES ecoregions E and F. This work will comprise three synergistic strands:

To engage with the UK RSA community to determine the extent of existing catch data recorded by anglers and to collate those data to construct time series of catches and compare against existing fisheries independent and dependant time series.

To develop, evaluate and pilot practical, reusable low cost technological solutions to complement RSA data recording, including natural language processing of social media sources; machine vision in species identification, and optical character recognition in form processing complemented with SMS, email and mobile solutions and their application to local and national angler survey programmes.

To evaluate the viability and define success criteria for a citizen science programme on the ongoing assessment of recreational sea angling, based on the outcomes of the preceding strands.

Contact:
School of Ocean Sciences
Bangor University
Menai Bridge
Anglesey
LL59 5AB
UK
Email: gmonkman@mistymountains.biz

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