1,721,076 research outputs found

    Ex post and ex ante evaluation of the long term management plan for sole and plaice in the North Sea (part 1): ex post

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    This report describes the first part of an ex post and ex ante evaluation of the long term management plan for sole and plaice in the North Sea as laid out in Council Regulation (EC) No 676/2007. This plan has been in place since 2007. The plan aims to ensure, in its first stage, that the stocks of plaice and sole in the North Sea are brought within safe biological limits. This shall be attained by reducing the fishing mortality rate on plaice and sole by 10 % each year, with a maximum TAC variation of 15 % per year until safe biological limits are reached for both stocks. These measures are to be further supported by imposing limits on the effort of fleets fishing these stocks. Following this, and after due consideration by the Council on the implementation methods for doing so, the plan will ensure that the stocks are exploited on the basis of maximum sustainable yield and under sustainable economic, environmental and social conditions

    Effort allocation of the Dutch beam trawl fleet in response to a temporarily closed area in the North Sea

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    The spawning stock of North Sea cod is at a historic low level and immediate management measures are needed to improve this situation. As a first step, the European Commission in 2001 closed a large area in the North Sea between February 15 and April 30 to all cod related fishing fleets in order to protect the spawning population. The closed area comprised important fishing grounds of the beam trawl fleet fishing for flatfish. In this paper the response of the Dutch fleet (components 225-300hp and >300hp) is analysed using data from EU-logbooks and from position recordings from the Vessel Monitoring System. No change was observed in the fleet of small beam trawlers. The fleet of large vessels displaced its activity to fishing grounds in the North Sea outside the closed areas, and to fishing grounds outside the North Sea. In the North Sea, beam trawling concentrated along the borders of closed areas and the Plaice Box. In the first week after the closure the number of trips in the open area doubled. Coinciding with this increase, the catch rate, expressed as revenue per hp-day, decreased. After the area was re-opened, the catch rate was exceptionally high but decreased to the normal level in the 2nd - 3rd week. The change in catch rate in relation to the change in fishing effort indicated that competitive interactions (in particular interference interactions) occurred among vessels. The implication of the observed fleet response is discussed against the background of the objective of the management measure to protect cod and the broader objective of the Common Fisheries Policy of ecosystem management. It is concluded that it is unlikely that cod has benefited from the area closure. Furthermore, the closure may have had a negative impact on the rate of discarding of demersal species and a negative impact on vulnerable components of the ecosystem (e.g. skates, long lived benthic species) due to an increase in trawling activities in certain area

    Data availability for the evaluation of stock status of species without catch advice: Case study: turbot (Psetta maxima) and Brill (Scophthalmus rhombus)

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    Several commercially important demersal fish stocks for the North Sea fisheries are classified as “category 11” in the light of the EU policy paper on fisheries management (17 May 2010, COM(2010) 241). For stocks in this category, there is no STECF (Scientific, technical and economic committee for fisheries ) management advice, due to the unknown status of the stocks. The reason for this is that the data and information available to perform analytical stock assessments are highly uncertain or lacking. This document describes existing data and options for collecting new data for the evaluation of the state of category 11 stocks. We focus on turbot and brill in the North Sea. Existing data from logbooks and the market sampling program can be used to estimate LPUE series used in age-based stock assessment methods, similar to other commercially important flatfish species such as plaice and sole. Landings Per Unit of Effort (LPUE) data of the Dutch beam trawl fleet > 221 kW were standardised for engine power and corrected for targeting behaviour as described below and graphically shown in Figure 3.2.1. The methods are similar to those used to analyse commercial LPUE data for North Sea plaice, described in Quirijns and Poos (2010). Landing rates (LPUE) by market category were calculated for the period 2002-2010. The corrected LPUE series indicate an increase in commercial LPUE for both species during the period 2002-2006. For turbot, the LPUE stays stable in the first five years, increases between 2006 and 2008, and decreases afterwards. The increase in brill LPUE is larger, and occurs throughout the study period. Compared to other commercially important flatfish species relatively few brill and turbot market samples are taken. This reduces the ability to track the cohorts in the LPUE series of the older ages which is a prerequisite for reliable stock assessment estimates. Also, the time series currently spans only 9 years. Collection of additional data may therefore be desirable. Expanding the BTS survey will provide industry independent data and would therefore give easily interpretable results. The option of an industry survey is also a good option if the survey is already being executed for sole and plaice. However, both options are costly. Therefore, the option of increasing the samples of turbot and brill at the auction is relatively easy and relatively inexpensive and therefore at present the most promising. The methods used for this document will not per definition be applicable for all category 11 species. For dab, flounder, lemon sole and tub gurnard, samples at the auctions are taken to collect biological data. For these species it may be possible to raise the data in a similar way as was done in this report to estimate the age composition of the stock. For other species (witch flounder, horse mackerel, silver smelt, red mullet and squid) there is no market sampling. For these species, other methods will have to be developed

    Linking catchability and fisher behaviour under effort management

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    Catchability is crucial for the economic performance of fisheries and their management. However, in many bio-economic simulation models it is assumed to be either constant or it is largely ignored, despite the fact that it is known to vary due to technical, environmental and behavioral factors. Such variation can cause the relationship between effort and fishing mortality to be nonlinear. This paper provides evidence for the possibility of nonlinear optimizing behavior from the Dutch beam trawl fishery, provides a methodology for estimating the curvature of the resulting relation, and a simple way of implementing these processes within a bio-economic model. Moreover, it shows the influence of a nonlinear relationship between effort and fishing mortality in a model of effort management (EU long-term flatfish management plan)

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Spawning closures: ecological and economic trade-offs in management of mixed demersal flatfish fisheries in the North Sea

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    The contribution of spawning closures to sustainable management of North Sea flatfish fisheries is explored using a spatial and temporal explicit model of four target species (sole, plaice, turbot and brill) and two bycatch species (cod, rays). Seasonal patterns in fishing effort and partial fishing mortality rates per day at sea by age group and area are estimated to quantify the effect of different spawning closure scenarios for sole and plaice on the exploitation pattern (F-at-age)

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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