Species composition of the unintentional catch from wells in tropical tuna purse seine fisheries

During the landing and since January 2021, a random sampling protocol has been followed by the Spanish tropical tuna sampling team in port, in order to record catch at size of unintentional catch, which were found in wells and landed together with commercial tunas by Spanish tropical tuna purse seiners. After practically a year of samplings, more than 8500 records have been collected. Each fish (or group of them, in the case of little fishes) has been identified and associated to a size, an estimated weight (following the size-weight formulas from fishbase.org), catch area, catch type (log or free school) and sex in the case of chondrichthyans (mostly Carcharhinus falciformis and to a lesser extent Pteroplatytrygon violacea). The main aim of the accidentally uploaded bycatch sampling protocol performed is to get a complete overview of accidental catches together with the data collected on board by the observers.