Epsilon Open Archive

The Institute of Marine Research is responsible for the trawl survey in the Skagerrak and the Kattegat areas of the North Sea. This survey is conducted twice annually, in quarters 1 and 3. The French bottom trawl GOV is used for sampling demersal species while in Q1 only, a MIK trawl is used at night for sampling fish larvae. During this survey a total of 46 valid hauls were towed in the whole area using the GOV-trawl, 27 in the Skagerrak and 19 in the Kattegat. Three stations had to be cancelled due to the Swedish Armed Forces’ disallowance. The total catch amounted to 18 tonnes and included 74 species of fish. The biological sampling, which includes collection of otoliths for age analysis, was done on the most important commercial species. In total 6 266 otoliths were collected from 11 different species. MIK trawling resulted in 65 valid trawl hauls with catches of 121 herring larvae, 25 sprat larvae and 11 eel larvae and several other species.