Description
Data Records
The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 613 records.
2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Ribera-Altimir, J., Martí-Comas, A., Puig-Capdevila, A., Santos-Bethencourt, R., Rojas-Garcia, A., Balcells-Surroca, M. (2026). ICATMAR bottom trawl survey data in the NW Mediterranean (commercial and bycatch species). www.icatmar.cat
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is ICATMAR. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: fafbf6ab-a219-464d-8783-940528298b66. ICATMAR publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Spain.
Keywords
Fisheries monitoring; Demersal fisheries; Bottom trawling; Mediterranean sea; Catalan coast; ICATMAR; Information Systems; Fisheries monitoring; Demersal fisheries; Bottom trawling; Mediterranean sea; Catalan coast; ICATMAR; Information Systems
Contacts
- Point Of Contact
- Desenvolupador Backend
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7191-2869
- Point Of Contact
- Head of Information Systems
- Point Of Contact
- Backend Developer
Geographic Coverage
Surveys covered the major fishing ports along the Catalan coast in the North Western Mediterranean Sea (N GSA6). The sampling area extends from 40.32°N to 42.40°N latitude and 0.66°E to 3.62°E longitude.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [40.324, 0.662], North East [42.395, 3.616] |
|---|
Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 2019-01-16 / 2024-12-18 |
|---|
Project Data
The Directorate-General for Maritime Policy and Sustainable Fisheries of the Catalan Government and the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) promoted the Institut Català de Recerca per a la Governança del Mar (ICATMAR), an autonomous organization whose main goal is to generate scientific advice to regional, state and European administrations for management purposes. Since 2019, ICATMAR has developed and implemented a fisheries monitoring program that aims to complement the data collection protocol already in place, working at a local scale to gather information on spatial and seasonal variability of the factors that can shape fishing stocks dynamics.
| Title | Institut Català de Recerca per a la Governança del Mar |
|---|---|
| Identifier | ICATMAR |
| Funding | Trawl surveys were financed by European Maritime and Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF) and the agreement between the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Catalan Government (BOE-A-2023-251060). |
| Study Area Description | The study area comprises the entire Catalan coast, with 580 km of coastline, constitutes the northern half of the GSA 6, which in whole comprises from Cape Creus down to Cartagena (Resolution GFCM/33/2009/2). The spatial distribution of the fishing effort by port shows the local-scale structure of the Catalan bottom trawling sector: the fleet of each port fishes in waters directly off their port, and overlapping among influence areas of the different ports is low (around 10 % in fishing hours per km2, Mingote et al., in prep) and exists only among adjacent ports. We chose the 9 ports with the highest annual revenues which are also equidistant throughout the territory, attending to both hydrographic and geomorphological characteristics of the continental margin (shelf and slope). In the northernmost part of the Catalan coast, the continental shelf is cut by deep submarine canyons that allow for deep-sea fisheries activity while remaining relatively close to the coast. The coast between Arenys de Mar and Tarragona is characterized by the absence of submarine canyons and the influence of densely populated areas such as Barcelona, Vilanova i la Geltrú or Tarragona. The southernmost area of the coast is deeply affected by the discharge of the river Ebre, which generates a delta between L’Ampolla and La Ràpita. The division of the Catalan coast in these three zones responds to the morphometric mesoscale analysis of the margin and has been used in previous faunistic assemblage studies (Carreton M. et al. 2025). |
| Design Description | Sampling trips were carried out on board trawling fishing vessels, with no change to their usual fishing activity, over commercial fishing grounds. Each of the three sampling zones was sampled monthly, with a rotation among the three ports of each zone, resulting in one quarterly sampling at each of the 9 selected ports. This allowed for the monitoring of seasonal patterns throughout the year. Each sampling day included three experimental hauls on board the same vessel, each one at one of the three depth ranges previously explained, within the high-fishing effort areas of each port. Exceptionally, in 2019 and 2020, seven of the Southern zone hauls were conducted in the lower slope. The average depth for each haul was then estimated by calculating an average point between the start and end points of each haul. Mesh size was 40-mm square for all hauls except in Palamós lower slope, where the self-enforced local management measures for the blue and red shrimp fishery require a 50-mm squared mesh (BOE 2018, APM/532/2018). Each haul was GPS-recorded with a start and end point, fishing time and gear width. These measurements were used to calculate the total swept area per haul in order to standardize species biomass and abundance values. The sampling is designed to run a complete cycle throughout a calendar year so that the data are comparable annually, and the data analyzed in this study correspond to the years 2019–2021 (Carreton M. et al. 2025). |
The personnel involved in the project:
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
Sampling Methods
Sampling trips were carried out on board trawling fishing vessels, with no change to their usual fishing activity, over commercial fishing grounds. Each of the three sampling zones was sampled monthly, with a rotation among the three ports of each zone, resulting in one quarterly sampling at each of the 9 selected ports. This allowed for the monitoring of seasonal patterns throughout the year. Each sampling day included three experimental hauls on board the same vessel, each one at one of the three depth ranges previously explained, within the high-fishing effort areas of each port. Exceptionally, in 2019 and 2020, seven of the Southern zone hauls were conducted in the lower slope. The average depth for each haul was then estimated by calculating an average point between the start and end points of each haul. Mesh size was 40-mm square for all hauls except in Palamós lower slope, where the self-enforced local management measures for the blue and red shrimp fishery require a 50-mm squared mesh (BOE 2018, APM/532/2018). Each haul was GPS-recorded with a start and end point, fishing time and gear width. These measurements were used to calculate the total swept area per haul in order to standardize species biomass and abundance values. The sampling is designed to run a complete cycle throughout a calendar year so that the data are comparable annually, and the data analyzed in this study correspond to the years 2019–2021 (Carreton M. et al. 2025).
| Study Extent | The study area comprises the entire Catalan coast, with 580 km of coastline, constitutes the northern half of the GSA 6, which in whole comprises from Cape Creus down to Cartagena (Resolution GFCM/33/2009/2). The spatial distribution of the fishing effort by port shows the local-scale structure of the Catalan bottom trawling sector: the fleet of each port fishes in waters directly off their port, and overlapping among influence areas of the different ports is low (around 10 % in fishing hours per km2, Mingote et al., in prep) and exists only among adjacent ports. We chose the 9 ports with the highest annual revenues which are also equidistant throughout the territory, attending to both hydrographic and geomorphological characteristics of the continental margin (shelf and slope). In the northernmost part of the Catalan coast, the continental shelf is cut by deep submarine canyons that allow for deep-sea fisheries activity while remaining relatively close to the coast. The coast between Arenys de Mar and Tarragona is characterized by the absence of submarine canyons and the influence of densely populated areas such as Barcelona, Vilanova i la Geltrú or Tarragona. The southernmost area of the coast is deeply affected by the discharge of the river Ebre, which generates a delta between L’Ampolla and La Ràpita. The division of the Catalan coast in these three zones responds to the morphometric mesoscale analysis of the margin and has been used in previous faunistic assemblage studies (Carreton M. et al. 2025). |
|---|---|
| Quality Control | All data collected go through a validation workflow to ensure high quality in their analysis and publishing. Using the data input website to ingest onboard and laboratory sampling data allows having more control of the data, prevents defects and facilitates validation, data availability and system reliability. This database includes parametrized text fields and the numeric fields with data ranges. Different validations are performed during the data input workflow to trigger warnings and detect errors to prevent defects. Finally, the data are displayed in interactive maps and charts to perform visual validations. The interactive maps use the library Leaflet and the interactive charts use the library Chartjs v2.8. At the end of each season, R scripts are executed to check joint data completeness and perform a general data validation (Ribera-Altimir J. et al. 2023). |
Method step description:
- The fishers sort the catch into two categories: commercial, i.e., individuals of commercial species to be sold in the fish auction, and discarded, i.e., all other organic and inorganic organisms and items. The discarded fraction includes individuals of non-commercial species and/or undersized or damaged individuals of commercial species – as well as natural debris and marine litter. All species of the commercial fraction, including fish, crustaceans and cephalopods among others, are identified and measured on board (total length, cephalothorax length and mantle length, respectively) (Carreton M. et al. 2025).
Bibliographic Citations
- Carreton, M., Galimany, E., Blanco, M., Garriga-Panisello, M., Colmenero, A. I., Balcells, M., Bustos, F., Mingote, M. G., López-Pérez, C., Nos, D., Puigcerver-Segarra, X., Pujol-Baucells, M., Ramírez, J. G., Ribera-Altimir, J., Rico, A. J., Rojas, A., Sala-Coromina, J., Santos-Bethencourt, R., Silvestre, M., … Company, J. B. (2025). Understanding the spatio-temporal variability of fisheries data for better bottom trawling management practices in the Catalan margin (NW Mediterranean Sea). Marine Policy, 172, 106512. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.MARPOL.2024.106512
- Ribera-Altimir, J., Llorach-Tó, G., Sala-Coromina, J., B. Company, J., & Galimany, E. (2023). Fisheries data management systems in the NW Mediterranean: from data collection to web visualization. Database, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/DATABASE/BAAD067
- Blanco, M., Nos, D., Lombarte, A., Recasens, L., Company, J. B., & Galimany, E. (2023). Characterization of discards along a wide bathymetric range from a trawl fishery in the NW Mediterranean. Fisheries Research, 258, 106552. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.FISHRES.2022.106552
Additional Metadata
| Acknowledgements | |
|---|---|
| Alternative Identifiers | 10.15470/89uh0e |
| https://ipt.gbif.es/resource?r=bottom_trawl_survey |