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蚌(Ensis siiqua和Ensis Magnus)。这些贝类在远东的价格很高，这推动了自1990年代中期以来大幅增长的渔业，达到每年约300万GB的价值，每年提取400-500吨剃刀。电捕是渔民的首选，因为与其他捕捞技术(如疏浚)相比，它产生的产品更清洁，因此更有价值。也有人声称，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。已经进行了一些研究，以了解电捕鱼对剃刀蚌和其他非目标底栖生物的短期影响。这些研究表明，这种影响是有限的，可以观察到剃刀蚌在电场过去几分钟后重新埋葬。非目标生物，如幼比目鱼、海星和螃蟹，要么暂时晕倒，要么明显没有受到影响。另一方面，有坊间证据表明，电捕的剃刀蚌不会像用其他技术收获的那样‘净化’a。这表明，电捕可能会在短期和中期影响文蛤的生理。尽管根据欧盟共同渔业政策，苏格兰政府以前是非法的，但苏格兰政府已经在苏格兰各地的许多地点建立了严格控制的研究规模的试验电捕。苏格兰海洋科学公司正在监测试捕渔业对Ensis种群的影响。然而，人们仍然担心没有收集到的较小和较小尺寸的剃刀蚌可能受到的长期影响，以及对更广泛的底栖生态系统的潜在影响，特别是在行业向电捕开放更广泛区域的压力下。该项目的目的将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.