Deep Water Fisheries of the North Atlantic Slope

Summary

Until recently the Continental Shelf areas of the North Atlantic have provided adequate fish stocks for the purposes of professional fishermen. Today most of these stocks are fully exploited or over exploited and commercial fisheries are, of necessity, severely restricted. Inevitably this has led to a search for new resources and, in particular, there is an increasing interest in the deep water species of the Atlantic Slope (circa 500m to 2000m). Although the biology of the fishes of the deeper water has been extensively studied by scientists for a century or more, there has been very little work in stock sizes. There is very little information to give to fishermen, or indeed to legislators who must exercise some restraint on these fisheries if the mistakes arising from too much effort on the Continental Shelf are to be avoided in deeper water. Up until now there has been only a limited amount of effort directed at these fisheries and for only a few species such as roundnose grenadier Coryphaenoides rupestris), roughhead grenadier (Macrourus berglax), blue ling (Molva dipterugia), orange roughy Hoplostethus atlanticus), black scabbard (Aphanopus carbo) and the more familiar Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides). This report has been produced from a scanned original and may therefore contain some formatting and other inaccuracies. In cases where this affects the technical content, a paper copy of the original report can still be obtained from Seafish.

Publication Reference No.

SR438

Publication date

01 March 1994