Deep-sea bottom handline fishing in Papua New Guinea: a pilot study.

Abstract

Bottom hand-lining was performed in three areas: Port Moresby, Milne Bay and Manus. It was shown that the catch rates are not Poisson distributed, i. e. they are not random, but no differences in catch rates could be found between the three areas, the time of the day or between different depths in the range fished, 70-270 m. It is concluded that the dumped distribution of the catch rates is probably due to different bait or by fishing at different sites, or both. Differences in mean weight of fish were found for different depths, with a general trend for fish weight to increase with depth. The mean weight at 200-2W m is significantly higher than at depths 140 150 m and mean weight at 220-270 m is significantly higher than at depths 80-110 and 140-190 m. Depth distributions are given for the 15 most common species encountered: Gnathodentex mossambicus, Lutjanus argentimaculatus, L. malabaricus, Pristipomoides multidens, P. flavipinnis, Etelis carbunculus, E. coruscans, E. radiosus, Tropidinus zonatus, T. argyrogrammicus, Tangia sp., Epinephelus compressus, E. magniscuttis, E. morrhua and Epinephelus sp The depth associations between these species are described by duster analysis based on a similarity matrix.