Despite demersal trawling monitoring programs are not aimed at quantifying mesopelagic organisms, they are recurrently captured as by catch between 30 and 800 m depth. These species are mostly diel vertical migrants, with differentiated behavior from benthic and demersal ones. Nevertheless, they are sometimes captured in large quantities (both abundance and biomass) although absent on other occasions. The co-occurrence observed with demersal populations may probably be due to the daytime and location of samplings, i.e. depth and type of bottom (habitat). In order to understand the mesopelagic-demersal coupling, we discuss spatio-temporal patterns observed along the Spanish Mediterranean coast during the 1994-2012 MEDITS survey.

Evaluación de Recursos Demersales por métodos directos en el área 1 y 2 del GFCM

MEDITS

FEMP