Within the Gulf of Guinea high levels of fisheries-related cetacean mortality (bycatch and direct-capture) has been documented. For locally rare species such removals could potentially lead to significant population level effects. However, information on the cetacean abundance and distribution is scarce. Similarly, it remains largely unreported where fishing fleets operate offshore. A cetacean ...

American eel (Anguilla rostrata) and European eel (Anguilla anguilla) populations have declined since the 1980s prompting concern about their status and the causes of decline, but stock assessment approaches to estimate effects of fishing on these populations are lacking. Since 1964, 16% of United States commercial American eel harvest came from the Potomac River, yet American eel abundance, pr...

Simulation and empirical analyses were conducted to evaluate the utility and robustness of average length (Lbar) of animals in the exploited population as an estimator of fishing mortality (F), and therefore as an indicator of exploitation status for Florida coral-reef fish. Simulation results showed that the Lbar estimator of fishing mortality was relatively insensitive to trends in recruitmen...

Freshwater turtles may ingest baited fish hooks because many are opportunistic scavengers. Although the ingestion of fish hooks is known to be a source of mortality in multiple vertebrate groups, the prevalence of hook ingestion by freshwater turtles has not been well studied. We trapped turtles from five rivers in the southeastern United States and used radiographs to examine over 600 individu...

—The purpose of this study was to assess initial and delayed mortality of spotted seatrout Cynoscion nebulosus captured during live-release tournaments. Additionally, we examined spotted seatrout mortality as a function of season and anatomical hooking location. We assessed tournament-related mortality at 10 live-release fishing tournaments held in four Texas bays—Galveston, Matagorda, Aransas,...