Evaluation des ressources halieutiques de l'ouest de l'Europe par campagnes de chalutages programmés. EVHOE 871. Rapport final

The first phase of the assessment of halieutic resources in the west of Europe was realised thanks to the Fisheries authority for the European Communities Commission. Different operations were carried out: - Creation of a data capture and extraction software. - Carrying out of a programmed trawling cruise in the area located between 48'35 N and the Capbreton canyon, from 15 m deep to 600 m. 132 30-minutes-stations were conducted and enabled the sampling of the main captured species as well as the collection of a large biological material. - Analysis of the trawling results through kriging. This method should facilitate the analysis of the distributions of the main halieutic populations. - Analysis of the yield and size/age distributions for the most numerous species enabling the localization of hake, whiting and pout nurseries, as well as that of mackerel and horse mackerel recruit concentrations in order to improve our knowledge of cod, monkfish and megrim distribution areas. The abundance indices will only be of any significance when we have a series of observations carried out over several years.