Leitão, F; Baptista, V; Erzini, K; Iritani, D; Zeller, D
Fishing activities in mainland Portugal waters represent an important economic activity that supplies the high fish demand of national consumers, ranked high globally with an average annual per capita consumption of approximately 60kg. The Portuguese domestic mainland fisheries are largely concentrated in near-shore waters, with sardine (Sardina pilchardus), horse mackerel (Trachurus mediterraneus Trachurus trachurus), chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus), hake (Merluccius merluccius) and octopus accounting for most of the landings. Although there have been studies on unreported catches, by-catch and discarding in different fisheries, this is the first study to provide an overall estimate of the total quantity of catches, including discards from 1950-2010 based on a fishery-by-fishery approach. Furthermore, to make comparative analyses of the catches and discards among the different fisheries, each fishery was assigned to one of the following sectors: industrial (large-scale commercial), artisanal (small-scale commercial), or subsistence and recreational (both small-scale noncommercial). Overall, reconstructed total catches amounted to just under 21.6 million t for 1950-2010, which is slightly more than 2 times the 10,592,310 t of landings officially reported by Portugal for the same time period. The industrial sector (15.4 million t) accounted for nearly 72% of total catches as estimated here, while the artisanal, recreational and subsistence sectors accounted for 6 million t (28%), 58,000 t (0.3%) and 54,000 t (0.3%) of the total catches, respectively. Discards contributed the most to unreported catches, accounting for 7.6 million t of total catches (i.e., 35%), while unreported landings amounted to around 2.9 million t (13%) over the 1950 to 2010 time period considered here.