Fishing for Data in the Orkney Shellfish Fishery

The project will investigate how the underwater environment affects catch and how we can make this a helpful tool for fishing crews. The FV Alison Marie and FV Queline are creel fishing boats and will be attaching the Enki oceanographic sensor to their creels. Enki will passively collect temperature, salinity, depth and turbidity data whilst the fishing crews fish for Brown Crab. Velvet Crab and European Lobster. The data the fishermen collects belongs to them to enhance their understanding of their fishery.

There is a lack of environmental data collected for inshore fisheries which is mostly due to limited funding. However, it is crucial to collect environmental data because it is used in stock assessments. As a result, fishermen and fisheries scientists don’t have a detailed understanding of how the marine environment affects fish stocks.