The fishing tactics (métier) employed by the trawl fleet of Barcelona (NW Mediterranean, Spain) to catch the juveniles of horned octopus (Eledone cirrhosa) were defined by multivariate statistics. The monthly series of catch per unit effort (CPUE), price and effort were obtained from daily records of the fishery from 1992 to 2001, together with the technical specifications of the vessels. Generalised linear models (GLMs) were applied to analyse the relationships between year, month, and technical characteristics with the CPUE, price and effort. The results showed that the models fitted to the E. cirrhosa data explained 61.57% of the deviance and that seasonal effects were important in explaining CPUE variability, the price of the catch and, to a lesser extent, the effort deployed by the trawlers. The results suggest that factors other than month or price condition the effort applied by this fishing tactic, probably size of juvenile E. cirrhosa, dictated by consumer preferences. The importance of seasonal effects in this fishery are discussed in terms of the recruitment of E. cirrhosa and consumer preferences. Contrary to other works applying GLM methods to the analysis of catch per unit effort, the importance of the technical characteristics of the vessels was very low

We thank the Fishermen’s Association of Barcelona for access to its computerised sales database and the project “Analysis and evaluation of the fisheries of the most commercially important cephalopods species in the Mediterranean sea”. EC, DG for Fisheries Study 97/0054

9 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables

Peer reviewed