Expeditionsrapport IBTS, januari 2020

The Institute of Marine Research is responsible for the trawl survey in the Skagerrak, a marginal sea to the North Sea and the Kattegat, a transition area to the Baltic Sea. This survey is conducted twice annually, in quarters 1 and 3. The French bottom trawl GOV is used for the fishing daytime while in Q1 only, a MIK trawl is used at night for sampling fish larvae.In all, 39 valid hauls were towed using the GOV-trawl, 21 in the Skagerrak and 18 in the Kattegat.The total catch amounted to 9,9 tonnes and included 66 species of fish. Biological sampling was carried out on the most important commercial species including otoliths taken for age analysis. In total 4 363 otoliths were collected from 12 different species.MIK trawling resulted in 41 valid trawl hauls with catches of 579 herring larvae, 4 sprat larvae and 5 eel larvae and several other species.