Pia Schuchert

Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) · Aquatics and Fisheries

Despite decades of active fisheries management, many stocks of Atlantic cod in its southern range are in a depleted state and mortality estimates remain high. Recovery of these stocks, as defined by management areas, could be confounded by cod distributions shifting outside of these areas. Here, we assess data from internationally coordinated trawl...

1 The Egyptian Red Sea (ERS) supports important artisanal, commercial and 2 recreational fisheries which are mainly managed using a summertime seasonal clo-3 sure. Fish stock status is little known and management options are severely limited. 4 We report the results of a questionnaire survey of artisan fishers from four Red Sea 5 ports, collecting...

1 The Egyptian Red Sea (ERS) supports important artisanal, commercial and 2 recreational fisheries which are mainly managed using a summertime seasonal clo-3 sure. Fish stock status is little known and management options are severely limited. 4 We report the results of a questionnaire survey of artisan fishers from four Red Sea 5 ports, collecting...

Machine learning covers a large set of algorithms that can be trained to identify patterns in data. Thanks to increases in the amounts of data and computing power available, it has become pervasive across scientific disciplines. We first highlight why machine learning is needed in marine ecology. Then we provide a quick primer on machine learning t...

Empirical harvest control rules set catch advice based on observed indicators and are increasingly being used worldwide to manage fish stocks that lack formal assessments of stock and exploitation status. Within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, trend-based rules that adjust advice according to recent survey observations hav...

The Workshop on stock identification of West of Scotland cod (WK6aCodID) convened to recommend the most plausible scenario of population structure for stock assessment and fishery management advice. The review considered geographic variation and movements of cod lifestages inferred from genetic analyses, scientific surveys, fishery data, tagging, a...

The International Bottom Trawl Survey Working Group (IBTSWG) coordinates fishery-inde-pendent bottom trawl surveys in the ICES area in the Northeast Atlantic and the North Sea. These long-term monitoring surveys provide data for stock assessments and facilitate examina-tion of changes in fish distribution and relative abundance. The group also prom...

The Irish Sea is an important area for Norway Lobster Nephrops norvegicus fisheries, which are the most valuable fishing resource in the UK. Norway lobster are known to ingest microplastic pollution present in the sediment and have displayed reduced body mass when exposed to microplastic pollution. Here, we identified microplastic pollution in the...

The International Bottom Trawl Survey Working Group (IBTSWG) coordinates fishery-inde-pendent multispecies bottom-trawl surveys within the ICES area. These long-term monitoring surveys provide data for stock assessments and facilitate examination of changes in fish distri-bution and abundance. The group also promotes the standardization of fishing...

Although frequently suggested as a goal for ecosystem-based fisheries management, incorporating ecosystem information into fisheries stock assessments has proven challenging. The uncertainty of input data, coupled with the structural uncertainty of complex multi-species models, currently makes the use of absolute values from such models contentious...

This report summarizes the national contributions in 2019–2020 and plans for the 2020–2021 surveys coordinated by IBTSWG. In the North Sea, the surveys are performed in quarters (Q) Q1 and Q3 while in the Northeast Atlantic the surveys are conducted in Q1, Q3, and Q4 with a suite of 14 national surveys covering a large area of continental shelf tha...

The Sixth Workshop on an Ecosystem Based Approach to Fishery Management for the Irish Sea (WKIRISH6), set out to operationalise the WKIrish regional benchmark process. WKIrish aimed to incorporate ecosystem information into the ICES single-species stock assessment process for the Irish Sea. Three independent ecosystems models have been in developme...

Plastic products have facilitated the daily lives of an exponentially increasing world population for over 70 years, whilst inadvertently creating one of the most topical environmental issues of the 21st Century: the plastic pollution crisis. Since the mid-20th Century, plastic production has expanded continuously to global production levels of ove...

In total the ICES Working Group for the Celtic Seas Ecoregion (WGCSE) is responsible for the provision of updated fisheries data, assessments and draft advice for 40 demersal fish and Nephrops stocks across ICES subareas 6 and 7 (with the distribution of megrim, seabass, anglerfish and saithe extending into other divisions). This includes twelve Ne...

This report summarises the national contributions in 2018–2019 and the planning for the 2019–2020 surveys coordinated by the International Bottom Trawl Survey Working Group (IBTSWG). In the North Sea, the surveys are performed in quarters (Q) Q1 and Q3 while in the Northeast Atlantic the surveys are conducted in Q1, Q3, and Q4 with a suite of 14 na...

The effects of large scale tidal energy device (TED) arrays on phytoplankton processes owing to the changes in hydrodynamic flows are unknown. Coupled two-dimensional biogeochemical and hydrodynamic models offer the opportunity to predict potential effects of large scale TED arrays on the local and regional phytoplankton dynamics in coastal and ins...

Coupled 2-dimensional biogeochemical and hydrodynamic models offer the opportunity to predict potential effects of large scale tidal energy device (TED) arrays on the local and regional phytoplankton dynamics in coastal and inshore environments. In an idealised environment the effect of TEDs on phytoplankton dynamics accounted for up to 25 % in phy...

Trace element signatures of otolith edges and cores from 335 austral hake (Merluccius autralis) were analysed using LA-ICPMS from samples collected in Chilean and Falkland Islands' waters, in order to provide potential insights into stock discrimination and migrations. Fish were caught in two locations in Chile and four locations in the south-west...

The control of grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) is widely undertaken as a conservation measure to protect red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) populations in the UK. However, inconsistencies and omissions in data collection, as well as fluctuating financial resourcing of control efforts, have meant that it has to date proved difficult to quantify t...

We examined temporal (annual & seasonal) patterns of nest box occupancy by red squirrels in a coniferous habitat in Great Britain. The effects of woodland habitat variation, and competition from nesting Great tits were investigated over a nine year period using basic linear models with a binomial error structure. Box use varied seasonally with peak...

Wildlife is a global source of endemic and emerging infectious diseases. The control of tuberculosis (TB) in cattle in Britain and Ireland is hindered by persistent infection in wild badgers (Meles meles). Vaccination with Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) has been shown to reduce the severity and progression of experimentally induced TB in captive ba...

Covariates included in the investigation of the directD and indirectI effects of BCG vaccination. (DOC)

The mean proportion of badgers, captured in vaccinate groups at each successive capture event, that had been vaccinated previously. The proportion of all badgers previously vaccinated (A) and previously vaccinated adults only (B) are shown, together with Standard deviation and the number of social groups from which badgers were captured. Capture ev...

Simple TB prevalence estimates for the study population over the four years of the study. Estimates are based on the first test result of all badgers captured each year throughout the whole study population (A), groups receiving the vaccinate treatment (B) and experimental control groups where no vaccine was administered (C). Prevalence estimates a...

Configuration of badger social group territories between 2006 and 2009. Allocation of vaccine treatment (shaded areas) and control (open areas) is shown. Circles indicate additional main setts located after bait marking of that year and for which the territorial boundaries could not be delineated until the following year, but which were determined...

Factors affecting the likelihood of unvaccinated badger cubs in vaccinate groups testing positive to any of the following diagnostic tests: IGRA (PPDB – PPDA); Stat-Pak; culture, where the proportion of badgers previously vaccinated is modelled as a range of categorical variables (a–c). (DOC)

Number of badgers captured at each successive capture event during the four-year field study, together with approximate capture dates. (DOC)

Estimated sensitivities and specificities for each diagnostic test and test combinations used in the analyses. (DOC)

This paper details the major output and interdisciplinary processes adopted within the VNN project “Interdisciplinary methods to build a socio-ecological decision-making tool to inform marine governance and policy”. A Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) was constructed using expert and stakeholder knowledge and datasets from the Western Indian Ocean. We...

Trace element fingerprints of edge and core regions in otoliths from 260 specimens of Patagonian hoki, Macruronus magellanicusLönnberg, 1907, were analyzed by LA-ICPMS to reveal whether this species forms one or more population units (stocks) in the Southern Oceans. Fish were caught on their spawning grounds in Chile and feeding grounds in Chile an...

Trace elemental signatures of otolith nuclei and edges were analysed by LA-ICP-MS in 514 specimens of the highly migratory oceanic fish southern blue whiting, Micromesistius australis australis, that were caught in their two distant spawning grounds located in the Southwest Atlantic (Patagonian Shelf around the Falkland Islands) and Southeast Pacif...