Scottish Government

Monkfish ( Lophius piscatorius and Lophius budegassa), also known as anglerfish, was the fourth most valuable species landed into Scotland into 2009. It's caught mainly by bottom trawl gear in the northern North Sea, to the north and west of Scotland close to the shelf edge.

MSY and Precautionary Approach Reference Points

State of Stock and Advice

• There is no accepted analytical assessment for this stock.
• Recent dedicated anglerfish surveys carried out by Marine Scotland Science in Division IVa and Subarea VI indicate a decline in abundance since 2007; and a decline in biomass in 2009 in all areas surveyed with the exception of Division VIb (Rockall).
• ICES advice on the basis of both the precautionary approach and the MSY approach was to reduce catches and effort in area IV. This was based on the information from surveys up to 2009.

Management Outcomes for 2011

At the December 2010 meeting in Brussels, the Council of Ministers decided that the EU Total Allowable Catch for the northern shelf (IV and VI, EC waters of IIa and Vb, and international waters of XII and XIV) monkfish should be 16,599 tonnes. The UK quota for 2011 was set at 9,794 tonnes, this includes 269 tonnes from Norwegian waters of IV.

The quota decision was reached on the basis of new information from the science/industry partnership monkfish surveys in 2010 (see Figure 1), which indicated that biomass in Sub-area IV had declined in recent years; whilst that in Sub-area VI had remained stable.

Information Source: ICES advice 2010 ( http://www.ices.dk/committe/acom/comwork/report/2010/2010/ang-ivvi.pdf).

Figure 1: Anglerfish ( Lophius piscatorius and Lophius budegassa). Estimates of total abundance and biomass respectively, for Northern shelf (black filled circles) with 95% confidence limits from the dedicated anglerfish surveys, with breakdown by area: ICES Subarea IV (red filled squares), Division VIa (blue open circles) and Division VIb (green filled triangles).