Bank resolved prognoses of sandeel fishing potential in the North Sea (38563)

Sandeel stocks in the North Sea have experienced successive recruitment failures within the last 5 years. There is an urgent need to develop management tools that may contribute near and long term planning of the sandeel fishery and understand the reasons behind recent recruitment failures.

The project has three main goals:
1. To fill some of the current knowledge gaps in the biology of North Sea sandeels and evaluate the North Sea sandeel stock via monitoring programs.
2. To demonstrate by combining advanced modelling with biological knowledge, that it is possible to generate fishing potential prognoses for sandeel spatially resolved at bank levels, just like ubiquitous whether forecasts, which at sight may be incorporated in the fishery management process;
3. To develop the collaboration with the Danish Fishermen's Association (DF) and foster a sustainable sandeel fishery based on increased self regulation within the fishery.

The scientific activities in this project relate developing the necessary components, which are a premise for generating fishing potential forecasts. This encompasses computer model code writing and data collection. The efforts have been very successful and a first generation fishing potential forecast has been generated as final products of this project. On the modelling side two model components has been developed. The first is the larval module that describes hydrodynamical transport of sandeel larvae which is determining next year’s recruitment. The second component is the population model which combines the hydrodynamical transport output with available biological data and knowledge into a spatially explicit sandeel stock model.Two fishing vessels take part in the project.

The project is coordinated by DTU Aqua.

Research area: Marine Living Resources