Across the seven Work Packages of this project the overall aim of supporting the conservation of sharks, skates and rays (elasmobranchs) in Scottish waters with a focus on providing data to help inform sustainably managed interactions with commercial fisheries.
Elasmobranchs variably get caught by commercial fisheries in UK waters, either through targeted fisheries, or as bycatch in mixed fisheries. As their populations are slow to recover from any impacts, management of remaining stocks is vital to ensure their conservation
This project has the following main objectives:
1) Provide and manage data on Critically Endangered, PMF species with the purpose of informing management, helping to reduce unwanted fisheries interactions.
2) To develop a prototypic system for the autonomous collection of recapture data from tagged and discarded elasmobranchs.
3) Develop a system for providing effort data from sea angling charter vessels.
