Monitoring bycatches in Norwegian fisheries — Species registered by the Norwegian Reference Fleet 2015-2018

Abstract

The Norwegian Reference Fleet is a group of active fishing vessels, selected as an approximate stratified random sample of vessels from the Norwegian fishing fleet, and tasked with providing information about catches and general fishing activity to the Institute of Marine Research. Fisheries data is collected by the crew members themselves, an approach commonly known as self-sampling of catches. This report aims to give an overview of how the Norwegian Reference Fleet record their catches and presents the reported catch composition with regards to number of species. A total of 271 species have been recorded by the Norwegian Reference Fleet between 2015 and 2018. There are an additional 39 records of unidentified species, which can occur because of excessive damage limiting an identification or a known misidentification that cannot be rectified.