Eastern Channel
Abstract: Data presented below focus on French Demersal Fleets that were detailed and studied during the project. Information concerning the other fleets/countries fishing in this area can be found here.
Data used to produce figures come from the STECF working group on Fisheries Dependent Informations . Please note that time series might be incomplete for some countries/indicators.
You can check 
if data were provide or not for a couple of country/year.
Landings
The Eastern Channel (EC) is a shallow epicontinental sea (maximum depth 100 m) covering a total area of approximately 35,000 km². It is delimited by the United Kingdom in the North and France in the South, connected to the North Sea by the Dover strait in the East, and separated from the Western English Channel by the Cotentin peninsula. It corresponds to the ICES division VIId is divided into 15 statistical rectangles.
The most important fishery operated in the EEC, both in number of vessels and in landings, is the French fishery (46% of the landings for 2006-2013), followed by the Dutch with 22%, the UK with 16%, and Belgium 8%. Those countries mainly operate pelagic trawl (targeting herring, mackerel and horse mackerel), beam-trawls (targeting sole and plaice), otter trawl (targeting a mixed assemblage of quota and non-quota demersal species), Danish seines (targeting mainly demersal non-quota species) and dredgers targeting (scallops). (CHARM III)
In Discardless, we focus on the French mixed demersal fisheries, consisting of several fleets (netters, bottom trawlers, dredgers or passive demersal) using different métiers and targeting different species assemblages during the year. The main species caught are: sole (Solea solea), plaice (Pleuronectes platessa), cod (Gadus morhua), whiting (Merlangius merlangus),
red mullet (Mullus surmuletus) (those 5 species are assessed in the ICES WGNSSK working group),
only plaice and sole are limited to the Eastern Channel), seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax), herring (Clupea harengus), mackerel (Scomber scombrus), horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus), scallop (Pecten maximus), squids (Loligo forbesii and Loligo vulgaris),
or cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis).
The mixed nature of these fisheries leads to high discard ratios, especially in the mixed demersal trawl fishery. The constraints exerted on fishers due to the combination of resource management measures, diverse fish communities and competition for space make the reduction of unwanted catches particularly challenging. The most discarded quota species are: horse mackerel, plaice, whiting and herring.
Compared to other areas such as the North Sea, the Eastern Channel is relatively small and describing effort and landings at the ICES statistical rectangles is relatively coarse. However, it can be seen that ICES statistical rectangles preferentially visited by French vessels are the rectangles located on the French waters, corresponding to the fishing areas of the smallest vessels and some limitation in the English waters.
Two rectangles are particularly important in the landings, the ICES statistical rectangles
29FO and
28E9.
Proportion of landings in each rectangle
Landings 2015
       [STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Trends in landings by gears
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
The French landings (in volumes) are mainly made by dredgers fishing for scallops, followed by pelagic trawlers targeting mostly herring and horse mackerel, the bottom trawlers are fishing on a mix of demersal species some of them being under TACs (plaice, sole, cod, whiting) and others not (red mullet, squids…). Trammel net are also targeting demersal species with a focus on flat fish.
Average Landings by gears
Year 2015
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Average Landings by countries
Year 2015
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Landings from dredgers (scallops) are mainly located in the Bay of Seine and in two other fishing grounds in the North of Dieppe and in the middle of the Eastern Channel (29FO).
Landings from netters are mainly made in 30F1 which corresponds to the Boulogne-sur-Mer netter fishery and some other coastal areas(netters are mainly small boats, around 12 meters).
Landings from bottom trawlers are more evenly distributed.
In the Eastern Channel case study, we only focus on French Fisheries, for information about other countries fishing in this area, go to Eastern Channel
Average Landings by species
Year 2015
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Trends in landings by species
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Discards
Discards figures are the estimates from STECF working group on Fisheries Dependent Informations group. Their spatial reallocation was made proportional to the observed landings by métier and species. This might not be realistic/accurate for all species, however it allows having a first approximation of the areas that might be of main concern, and start the dialogue between scientists, fishermen and managers to better describe these areas.
Catches (Landings+Discards)
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Disclaimer : Following graphs are made using discards rates at high spatial level and the landings at statistical rectangle level as raising factor. We assume that it's not the more statistically consistent way to proceed. However we consider that, with available data, it's a first step to use the data.
Discards by species (Average discards ratio applied to landings by rectangle)
Year 2014
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Year=2015
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Discards by Species for most important gears (year=2015) (Average discards ratio applied to landings by rectangle)
First Gear (in terms of total discards) (TR2)
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Trends in discards by Country (5 most important countries in Landings)
Total Discards
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Discards ratio (Discards/(landings+discards))
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Trends in discards by Gear (5 most important Gear in Landings)
Total Discards
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Discards ratio (Discards/(landings+discards))
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
In the Eastern Channel case study, we only focus on French Fisheries, for information about other countries fishing in this area, go to Eastern Channel
As in the other areas, Bottom trawlers have the higher discard ratios. Many reasons for discarding have been identified and listed for these fisheries. Discarding can happen because of regulation on minimal landing sizes, TACs limitation, market problems.
The increase in the discard ratio is not representative of what happened in these fisheries, it is a consequence of data provision and an increase of the data quality of the observer program.
Even if dredgers have a high level of discards, these discards are mainly constituted of scallops (due to minimal landing sizes). Scallops are discarded alive and will contribute to the exploitable biomass latter in the year.
Trends in discards by species (5 most important species in Landings)
Total Discards
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
Discards ratio (Discards/(landings+discards))
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[STECF FDI data (2015)] |
En savoir plus
European regulation for the case study 
Citation :
Fiche Eastern Channel, Author(s) : Youenn Vermard and Marie Savina-Rolland
DiscardLess Atlas [on line]. 2017. Guitton J., Ulrich, C., Vermard Y., Afonso P., Andonegi E., Argyrou I., Calderwood J., Fauconnet L., Quetglas A., Morato T., Prellezo R., Robert M., Savina-Rolland M., Triantaphyllidis G., Vaz S.
http://www.discardless.eu/atlas/
