Organism and ecological impacts of electrofishing in Scottish shallow coastal habitats.

在过去的十年里，电捕鱼在苏格兰周围的浅海沿海地区得到了发展。主要目标是两种剃刀蛤（Ensis siliqua和Ensis magnus）。这些贝类在远东的价格很高，这推动了自20世纪90年代中期以来渔业的大幅增长，达到每年约300万英镑的价值，每年提取400-500吨剃须刀。渔民喜欢用电捕鱼，因为与其他捕捞技术（如疏浚）相比，用电捕鱼生产的产品更清洁，因此更有价值。还有人声称，从环境角度来看，电捕鱼更无害，但支持这一点的科学证据有限。已经就电捕鱼对剃刀蛤和其他非目标底栖生物的短期影响进行了一些研究。这些研究表明，影响是有限的，因为观察到剃刀蛤在电场过去几分钟后会重新掩埋。非目标生物，如幼年比目鱼、海星和螃蟹，要么暂时昏迷，要么明显不受影响。另一方面，有传闻证据表明，电捕的剃刀蛤并不像用其他技术捕捞的那样“净化”。这表明，电捕鱼可能会影响蛤蜊的生理在短期内，可能是中期。虽然以前非法根据欧盟共同渔业政策，苏格兰政府已经建立了一个严格控制的研究规模的试验电捕蛤蜊在苏格兰周围的一些位置。苏格兰海洋科学公司正在监测试验性捕捞对恩西斯种群的影响。然而，人们仍然担心，不收集的较小和较小的剃刀蛤以及更广泛的海底生态系统可能会受到长期影响，特别是在业界要求开放更广泛地区进行电捕鱼的压力下，该项目的目的是进行实验室和实地研究，以解决这些问题。

Over the last decade, electrofishing has developed in shallow marine coastal sites around Scotland. The principal targets are two species of razor clam (Ensis siliqua and Ensis magnus). These shellfish command high prices in the Far East which has driven a fishery that has increased substantially since the mid-1990s reaching a value of around £3 million per annum and extracting 400-500 tonnes of razors per annum. Electrofishing is preferred by the fishers because it produces a cleaner and hence more valuable product compared with other harvest techniques, such as dredging. It is also claimed that electrofishing is more benign from an environmental view but there is limited scientific evidence to support this. Some research has been conducted on the short-term impacts of electrofishing on razor clams and other non-target benthic organisms. These studies suggested that impacts are limited with razor clams being observed to rebury a few minutes after the electrical field has passed. Non-target organisms such as juvenile flatfish, starfish and crabs were either temporarily stunned or apparently unaffected. On the other hand there is anecdotal evidence that electrofished razor clams do not 'depurate'a as well as those harvested using other techniques. This suggests that electrofishing may affect the physiology of the clams in the short and possibly medium-term.Although previously illegal under the EU Common Fisheries Policy, the Scottish Government has established a tightly controlled research-scale trial electrofishery for razor clams in a number of locations around Scotland. The impacts of the trial fisheries on the Ensis stocks are being monitored by Marine Scotland Science. However, concerns remain about potential longer-term impacts on both smaller and under-sized razor clams that are not collected, and on the wider benthic ecosystem, especially with industry pressure to open out wider areas to electrofishing.The aims of the project will be to conduct laboratory and field-studies to address these issues.