Crown

The requirement to display sensitive areas relating to the life history of commercially important fish species in British waters is well recognized. Sensitive areas have previously been described as spawning and nursery grounds. Here we consider only areas where there is evidence of aggregations of 0 group fish and/or larvae of key commercial species. 0 group fish are defined as fish in the first year of their lives. These fish sensitivity maps were originally generated to provide a spatial and temporal description of where physical damage could potentially occur to fish species at sensitive stages in essential habitats of their life cycle. Sources of damage in this context referred to seismic surveying conducted by the offshore Oil and Gas industry during their site investigations. In addition to the acoustic energy that the seismic survey activities generate, we should now add other percussive impact noises from pile driving seabed foundation pins into the seabed, such as those required for offshore renewable energy sites. The spatial location of these fish life history events and their potential interaction with offshore industries can heavily influence the planning, costs and delivery of these offshore developments. It is imperative that these maps reflect the current extent of these areas.

This layer depicted modelled probability of Sprat in year 0 group.

This data was prepared for the report 'Coull, K.A., Johnstone, R., and S.I. Rogers. 1998. Fisheries Sensitivity Maps in British Waters' which includes maps of the main spawning and nursery grounds for 14 commercially important species (cod, haddock, whiting, saithe, Norway pout, blue whiting, mackerel, herring, sprat, sandeels, plaice, lemon sole, sole and Norway lobster).

During the late 1990s, a collaborative project between the national fisheries laboratories (Cefas and the then Fisheries Research Services, Aberdeen), the UK Offshore Operator's Association (UKOOA), the Scottish Fishermen's Association (SFF) and the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations (NFFO) produced the Fisheries Sensitivity Maps in British Waters.

The data is available from CEFAS via http://data.cefas.co.uk/#/View/149. This layer displays nursery grounds for Cod.

The spatial variation in Species Richness of demersal fish in waters around Scotland, averaged over the period 1999 to 2009.

This dataset is part of the larger Spatial Variation of Demersal Fish in Waters Around Scotland Dataset, which includes three layers that show the spatial variation of Demersal fish (generally living on or near the seabed) in waters around Scotland (averaged over the period 1999 to 2008) for:

• Size Composition (Large Fish Indicator) (defined as the proportion of fish (by weight) in the community that is greater than 40 cm in length). The higher the value (varying between 0 and 1), the greater the proportion of large fish in the community.
• Species Richness (a count of the number of demersal fish species recorded in any survey sample).
• Species Diversity (indices that also take account of the relative abundance of each species in the sample).

All three datasets are based on surveys carried out by ICES set up to provide fisheries independent information to support stock assessments.

Marine Scotland has undertaken survey and monitoring work to provide expert scientific and technical advice to support Scottish Government policies and regulatory responsibilities. The videos and images produced during these seabed surveys are useful for a wide range of activities and research.  These datasets have been georeferenced and mapped using Google Earth. This layer depicts the seabed video track locations.