Tag Archives: Falkland calamari

Falklands Squid – A Fisheries Management Success Story

A suite of conservation measures overturned a negative trend in squid abundance in the 1990s, turning this into a stable fishery with total annual catches ranging between 60,000 and 80,000 tonnes over the last three years. Most of these species have short life cycles with completely new generations joining the fishery every year. The annual turnover, together with climatic variability, results in high abundance fluctuations that make   squid fisheries notoriously difficult to manage and risky for fishing companies and their production chains. >click to read< During seasons, the stock biomass of squid remaining is estimated by depletion models, which are continually updated with mandatory daily reports of catch and effort from trawlers. >click to read< 14:45

Falklands: Outwitting canny fur seals feasting on abundant Loligo

Falkland Islands Senior Fisheries Scientist Dr Alexander Arkhipkin explains the habits of fur seals and the efforts undertaken to reduce by-catch in the Loligo fishery. Stocks of Falkland calamari (Loligo) are very prolific this year. During the first season, the fleet harvested around 40,000 tons, and two weeks of the second season brought onboard another 10,000 tons of squid. Aggregations of calamari are so dense that fishing vessels worked up to their freezing capacities having an average of 60-65 tons of squid per vessel per day. Very unusually this year, dense squid aggregations also attracted their natural predators, fur seals and sea lions into the fishing area. As the vessels concentrate squid in front of the trawl, seals have their feeding frenzy in the close vicinity of the net, and within the net too. click here to read the story 11:44