Historically, flounder catches reached maximum in 1930' (about 60 thousand tons) in very short time and rapidly collapsed at the beginning of 1940s. After that period, catches fluctuated, but stayed at relatively low level in comparison to 1930. There is an ecological puzzle - what happened to flounder stock that catches increased to so high level and collapsed so rapidly next ? Was that an environmental factor or a human impact ? To answer that question, the first step is to reconstruct Baltic flounder stock biomass.

Exploring catch data since 1906

The historical catch data and environmental conditions characteristics will be compiled and analysed in order to reach the aim. Long term datasets are considered as very useful  to increase our knowledge on stock and ecosystem dynamics. They usually contain different combinations of natural conditions and human pressures, which give a lot of information to help predict the biomass and recruitment fluctuations.

In this project we will explore historical catch data back to 1906 (Hammer at Feistel et al., 2008) and model stock dynamic taking into account all available historical information (e.g.  flounder reproductive volume – Ustups et al., 2013).

The main product of this project w​ill be biomass reconstruction of flounder across the 100 years period, including the discussion of factors that could influence its dynamics.

Project information

ICES Science Fund supports innovative projects developed in collaboration with academic and government institutions from ICES member countries. The lead scientist within the project is Anna Luzenczyk at the National Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Poland.

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