Fishing Discards in the Spanish otter-trawl fishery: Discard rates and indicators of bycatch of key species in North Iberian Waters

The study area covers the north Iberian continental shelf and upper slope.Two ICES divisions are used: VIIIC (North Galicia) and IXa (South Galicia).The catch dataset was compiled from the "Spanish Discard Sampling Programme" monitored by IEO for the period 2006-2008.This programme is based on a stratified random sampling, considering the "Fishery Unit" as stratum and the trip as sampling unit..The available biological data were collected on a haul-by-haul basis and consisted of catch and discard observations of both non-and commercially-valuable species (including invertebrates such as crustaceans, molluscs and cephalopods) (2003-2008 data set).Due to the large number of discarded species involved, discard information was wherever possible limited to the ten most discarded species.