A Preliminary Study on the Survival of Brown Comber, <I>Serranus Hepatus</I> (Actinopterygii, Perciformes, Serranidae), Escaping from the Codend of a Bottom Trawl

Demersal trawling in Turkish Coasts is performed on the grounds where more than 50 species encounter the gear (Tosunoglu et al. 2003b). Similarly, it has been reported that trawl fisheries is generally multispecies in the Mediterranean Sea (Tudela 2004). A considerable amount of fishes such as annular seabream, (Diplodus annularis) (see Ozbilgin et al. 2005), black goby (Gobius niger), red bandfish (Cepola macrophthalma) (see Lamprakis et al. 2003) end up as discard or bycatch in the bottom trawl fishery that targets the marketable demersal species. One of the reported discard fishes captured by bottom trawls (Lamprakis et al. 2003) is brown comber, Serranus hepatus, which is a species of a minor commercial (Froese and Pauly 2009). Minimum landing size (MLS), which is designed to allow escapement of undersized fish, for this species is not specified in the Turkish Fisheries Regulations (Anonymous 2008). Discard of trawl fisheries are commonly a result of conventional diamond mesh cod-ends regarding MLS of the target species (Graham and Kynoch 2001). In Turkish waters, large amount of bycatch and discard where reported by Tosunoglu et al. (2003b) and Metin et al. (2005). According to the present legislation, minimum trawl codend mesh sizes are 40 mm for the Black Sea and 44 mm for the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea (Anonymous 2008). The fate of fish such as brown comber, in terms of unaccounted fishing mortality, is ACTA ICHTHYOLOGICA ET PISCATORIA (2010) 40 (1): 27–36 DOI: 10.3750/AIP2010.40.1.04