Investigation of purse seine bycatch composition in North Aegean Sea

INVESTIGATION OF PURSE SEINE BYCATCH COMPOSITION IN NORTHAEGEAN SEAABSTRACTMost of the fisheries production in Turkey as well as in the world comes from purseseine fishery. Not only target species but also bycatch species are caught during purse seinefisheries. Discard of the bycatch is commonly practiced by the commercial fisheriesworldwide and is estimated as 7,3 million tons annually. In order to ecologically sustaincommercial fisheries many developed countries are setting up bycatch policies. Estimation ofthe amount and identification of the bycatch species is an important part of the unaccountedmortality rates for fisheries management.In this study, surveys were conducted with the Canakkale purse seine fisheries fleet anda total of 34 fish species were captured. During this survey total of 9 target species, 7incidental species and 18 discard species were caught within the purse seine fisheries. Totalcatch rates included about 74.73% of target species, 0.17% of incidental species and 25.11%of discard species. European sprat (Spratus spratus) was the most dominant (99.65%).Key words: Bycatch, Discard, Incidental Catch, Purse Seining, North Aegean SeaThe present Master thesis was supported by Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University BAP underthe project no 2005-102.v