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Metadata: Spawning and nursery grounds of forage fish in Welsh and surrounding waters from 2008 to 2020
Abstract:
The maps provide information on the location of spawning and nursery areas of several forage fish species in Welsh and surrounding waters, including the Irish and Celtic Seas and the western English Channel. The forage fish populations inhabiting these waters provide a key source of prey for many predators, such as marine mammal and seabird species, including several of conservation concern, that either breed or overwinter in the study area. Given that several forage fish species in the northeast Atlantic have shown major changes in distribution and abundance, up-to-date information on their recent distribution patterns is important, including on where the main nursery and spawning grounds are presently located. The maps are provided for eleven fish species that are prey to marine mammals and seabirds: herring, sprat, sardine, anchovy, sandeel, horse mackerel, mackerel and garfish as well as the gadoid species poor cod, whiting and cod. Using survey data from 2008 to 2020, hotspot maps were created for adults and juveniles of each of the species. Data on most of the species was sparse and some of the gears used in fisheries surveys were not designed to catch the target species. However, a hotspot methodology allowed data from different gears to be standardised and combined into a composite map which covered most of the study area during two periods of the year (Quarter 1 and Quarter 4). Maps largely corresponded to those previously reported although several new species were included for which no or limited historic maps were available, specifically sprat, poor cod and garfish.
Data holder:
Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS)
| Other details | ||
| Internal code | Internally assigned metadata identifier | 9254 |
| Title | The title is used to provide a brief and precise description of the dataset such as 'Date', 'Originating organisation/programme', 'Location' and 'Type of survey'. All acronyms and abbreviations should be reproduced in full. | Spawning and nursery grounds of forage fish in Welsh and surrounding waters from 2008 to 2020 |
| File Identifier | The File Identifier is a code, preferably a GUID, that is globally unique and remains with the same metadata record even if the record is edited or transferred between portals or tools. | CEFAS20ff7c47-8572-46bb-bfa6-a2f5b8d373a4 |
| Resource Identifier | This is the code assigned by the data owner. | CEFAS21465 |
| Resource type | The resource type will likely be a dataset but could also be a series (collection of datasets with a common specification) or a service. | dataset |
| Start date | This describes the date the resource starts. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2008 |
| End date | This describes the date the resource ends. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2020 |
| Frequency of updates | This describes the frequency with which the resource is modified or updated i.e. a monitoring programme that samples once per year has a frequency that is described as 'annually'. | notPlanned |
| Abstract | The abstract provides a clear and brief statement of the content of the resource. | The maps provide information on the location of spawning and nursery areas of several forage fish species in Welsh and surrounding waters, including the Irish and Celtic Seas and the western English Channel. The forage fish populations inhabiting these waters provide a key source of prey for many predators, such as marine mammal and seabird species, including several of conservation concern, that either breed or overwinter in the study area. Given that several forage fish species in the northeast Atlantic have shown major changes in distribution and abundance, up-to-date information on their recent distribution patterns is important, including on where the main nursery and spawning grounds are presently located. The maps are provided for eleven fish species that are prey to marine mammals and seabirds: herring, sprat, sardine, anchovy, sandeel, horse mackerel, mackerel and garfish as well as the gadoid species poor cod, whiting and cod. Using survey data from 2008 to 2020, hotspot maps were created for adults and juveniles of each of the species. Data on most of the species was sparse and some of the gears used in fisheries surveys were not designed to catch the target species. However, a hotspot methodology allowed data from different gears to be standardised and combined into a composite map which covered most of the study area during two periods of the year (Quarter 1 and Quarter 4). Maps largely corresponded to those previously reported although several new species were included for which no or limited historic maps were available, specifically sprat, poor cod and garfish. |
| Lineage | Lineage includes the background information, history of the sources of data, data quality statements and methods. | The focus of this study was spawning and nursery areas of forage fish in Welsh waters and surrounding shelf sea waters of the Celtic Sea, Irish Sea and the western English Channel. Publicly available data from international fisheries-independent surveys were supplemented by data collected on surveys by Cefas.Data from three different types of surveys were considered for this study: pelagic (acoustic), demersal otter trawl (also referred to as bottom trawl) and beam trawl surveys. The available surveys included in this study covered two periods, between February and April and between September and December. To ensure the largest possible spatial coverage, surveys in either period were pooled and termed Quarter 1 and Quarter 4. Distribution of juveniles in both Quarters (chapter 4) was considered representative of the nursery grounds for the species. However, the distribution of adult fish was only assumed to represent spawning areas during the Quarter that coincided with the spawning period. For some species the peak spawning periods fell outside the survey periods in which case no spawning maps could be produced. However, the adult fish distribution maps during both Quarters were included in this report. The survey data used in this work are limited to waters more than ~20 m deep and the maps of the spawning and nursery areas in this report are therefore not representative of estuarine and transitional waters. as the catchability of species varies by survey and, particularly, gear type, averaging the species abundance data from different surveys, would not have been appropriate. To compensate for differences between surveys in gear selectivity, we created distribution maps for each species and size category by using a hotspot approach. This was based on a threshold, applied to the abundance data for each survey year separately. For each species and size category, these binary hotspot maps were then averaged across the surveys and years within a period (Quarter). A full description of the hotspot methodology used can be found in Campanella and van der Kooij (2021) ( `https://waleslink.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/1.-Spawning-and-nursery-grounds-of-forage-fishCEFAS-project-report-for-RSPB.pdf` ) .. `https://waleslink.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/1.-spawning-and-nursery-grounds-of-forage-fishcefas-project-report-for-rspb.pdf`: https://waleslink.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/1.-Spawning-and-nursery-grounds-of-forage-fish_CEFAS-project-report-for-RSPB.pdf |
| Related keywords | ||
| Keyword | General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Fish |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Spawning grounds | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Stock (biological) | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Species distribution | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Water column | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Benthic boundary | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Epipelagic | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Marine Environmental Data and Information Network | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | data.gov.uk | |
| Geographical coverage | ||
| North | The northern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 55 |
| East | The eastern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | -1 |
| South | The southern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 48 |
| West | The western-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | -10 |
| Responsible organisations | ||
| Role | The point of contact is person or organisation with responsibility for the creation and maintenance of the metadata for the resource. | pointOfContact |
| Organisation name | Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) | |
| Delivery point | Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory, Pakefield Road | |
| Postal code | NR33 0HT | |
| City | Lowestoft | |
| Administrative area | Suffolk | |
| Country | UK | |
| data.manager@cefas.co.uk | ||
| Role | The originator is the person or organisation who created, collected or produced the resource. | originator |
| Organisation name | Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) | |
| Delivery point | Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory, Pakefield Road | |
| Postal code | NR33 0HT | |
| City | Lowestoft | |
| Administrative area | Suffolk | |
| Country | UK | |
| data.manager@cefas.co.uk | ||
| Role | The custodian is the person or organisation that accepts responsibility for the resource and ensures appropriate care and maintenance. If a dataset has been lodged with a Data Archive Centre for maintenance then this organisation is be entered here. | custodian |
| Organisation name | Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) | |
| Delivery point | Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory, Pakefield Road | |
| Postal code | NR33 0HT | |
| City | Lowestoft | |
| Administrative area | Suffolk | |
| Country | UK | |
| data.manager@cefas.co.uk | ||
| Role | The distributor is the person or organisation that distributes the resource. | distributor |
| Organisation name | Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory (CEFAS) | |
| Delivery point | Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory, Pakefield Road | |
| Postal code | NR33 0HT | |
| City | Lowestoft | |
| Administrative area | Suffolk | |
| Country | UK | |
| data.manager@cefas.co.uk | ||
| Role | The owner is the person or organisation that owns the resource. | owner |
| Organisation name | Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (HQ) | |
| dpofficer@rspb.org.uk | ||
| Resource locators | ||
| Locator URL | Web address (URL) that links to the resource | https://data.cefas.co.uk/view/21465 |
| Locator name | Name of the web resource | Cefas Data Portal |
| Dataset constraints | ||
| 20.1 Limitations on Public Access - Access constraints | This states `otherRestrictions` from ISO vocabulary RestrictionCode and is an INSPIRE/GEMINI requirement. | otherRestrictions |
| 20.2 Limitations on Public Access - Other constraints | noLimitations | |
| 21.1 Conditions for Access and Use - Use constraints | This states `otherRestrictions` from ISO vocabulary RestrictionCode and is an INSPIRE/GEMINI requirement. | otherRestrictions |
| 21.2 Conditions for Access and Use - Other constraints | https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ | |
| Version info | ||
| Date of publication | The publication date of the resource or if previously unpublished the date that the resource was made publicly available via the MEDIN network. | 2022-06-21 |
| Date of last revision | The most recent date that the resource was revised. | 2023-09-20 |
| Date of creation | The date that the resource was created. | 2022-05-10 |
| Harvest date | The date which this record has been (re)harvested from the provider. | 2026-04-19 |
| Metadata date | The date when the content of this metadata record was last updated. | 2023-09-20 |
| Metadata standard name | The name of the metadata standard used to create this metadata | MEDIN |
| Metadata standard version | The version of the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard used to create the metadata record | 3.1.1 |