This Fisheries Science Partnership (FSP) project was a collaboration between
industry and scientists, responding to the need for data from the main small
pelagic fisheries in the South West coast of England. It had three primary
objectives: i) to collaborate, improve and continue the self‐sampling
time‐series of biological data collected on sardine from commercial catches in
support of the stock assessment; ii) to engage the Lyme Bay fishermen in a
self‐sampling programme to collect biological data on sprat needed for the
stock assessment and iii) to run an industry‐based acoustic survey in parallel
with the existing scientific PELTIC survey to involve industry in the process
of collecting fisheries independent data and to investigate several queries
from industry about the validity of the Cefas PELTIC survey (effects of timing
and lack of shallow water coverage on biomass estimate).
