Puente Sabarís

What a coincidence, we came across Puente Sabarís a couple of hours ago, a Galician trawler part of the Spanish freezer fleet, aprox. at  46º28’N – 041º35’W. I attend every year scientific meetings in Copenhagen, organised by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which provides scientific advice on the state of fishing resources in the Eastern North Atlantic (East of 42ºN) to member states. ICES has in the Eastern North Atlantic the same role as the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) in the Western North Atlantic. In those meetings we pool all the information on official catches and scientific observer data to investigate the state of fish populations subjected to quota limits and estimate how much can be sustainably fished the next year.

Spain has got a freezer fleet that stay at sea for months, and every year I have to analyse the official  catch data from the trawlers operating at Hatton Bank, to the west of the UK, and Reykjanes, over the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Some of these ships continue to the NAFO Regulatory Area (that is, international waters west of 42ºW), but what they fish there is for my colleagues Diana and Fernando to analyse.

The Spanish Oceanography Institute (IEO) also sends scientific observers on board these and many other commercial vessels, to collect biological data such as fish length, sex, weight, etc.. These are very important data, because there are not surveys in every fishing ground, and even when they exist, the fishing gear used in surveys may differ from the commercial gear. This means that the commercial catch is very different from the survey catch, due to differences in gear selectivity. For example, in the surveys we want to catch all the length range, but commercial vessels prefer to catch what they can sell.

Thus these trawlers feel as old acquaintances even though I have never set foot on any of them, and one of them is precisely Puente Sabarís. So farewell, Puente Sabarís. I hope you had a good trip and I wish you an easy journey – we think you were headed for home.

Puente Sabarís