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A long-term view on recent changes in abundance of common skate complex in the North Sea

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Abstract

Following decades of declines, populations of large fish recently started to increase in the North Sea, presumably due to reduced fishing pressure. However, population recovery may be too readily claimed, since standardised sampling of fish stocks commenced only in the 1970s, well after many species had already collapsed. A true recovery must be seen from a long-term perspective. The critically endangered common skate (Dipturus batis, Rajidae) species complex is an example of a large-bodied fish that mostly disappeared before standardised monitoring took place. Here, we put the recent increase in population size into a 120-year perspective, throughout three geographical divisions in the North Sea. We analysed a large range of mostly undisclosed historical data and contemporary sources. A reconstruction of Dutch commercial landings data confirms that the species used to be very abundant between 1901 and 1920, and shows how it steadily declined from 1920 onwards until it got extirpated around 1970. Based on a quantitative analysis of standardised catch numbers from fishery-independent surveys time, we conclude that the current abundance of the species is still below historical baselines and represents a local recovery at most. We further demonstrate a prominent and consistent pattern in size distribution, with larger (mature) individuals only occurring in the northern North Sea. A large dataset on historical stomach contents from the central North Sea confirmed the diet of young common skate, which consisted predominantly of shrimps. Our review exemplifies the importance of marine historical ecology to deduce the natural richness of the North Sea.

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Data availability statement

Original data is available at: https://dataportal.nioz.nl/doi/10.25850/nioz/7b.b.rd.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Monique van de Water for critical input during the preparation of this manuscript. We want to thank Heino Fock for kindly providing data from the Poseidon I surveys. We are grateful to Leonne van Weegen and Marlies Bruining from the NIOZ library for finding historical documents. We thank all people that collected data for the NIOZ-bycatch programme and the late L. Holthuis for identification of prey remains. Suzanne Poiesz and Vincent van Ernich helped with digitising the bycatch data from the NIOZ archives. Hans Witte provided a large variety of data sources and advice and helped reconstruct catch locations. We thank Esther Dondorp Ruiter from Naturalis for providing us with pictures of a museum specimen. We acknowledge a research fund from WWF for the work by RB in this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Coastal Systems, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, P.O. Box 59, 1790 AB, Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands

    Roeland A. Bom, Henk W. van der Veer & Anieke van Leeuwen

  2. Stichting Het Wereld Natuur Fonds-Nederland, Driebergseweg 10, 3708 JB, Zeist, The Netherlands

    Aafke Brader

  3. Wageningen Marine Research, PO Box 68, IJmuiden, 1970 AB, The Netherlands

    Jurgen Batsleer & Jan-Jaap Poos

  4. Aquaculture and Fisheries Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, Wageningen, 6700 AH, The Netherlands

    Jan-Jaap Poos

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  1. Roeland A. Bom
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  2. Aafke Brader
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  3. Jurgen Batsleer
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  4. Jan-Jaap Poos
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  5. Henk W. van der Veer
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  6. Anieke van Leeuwen
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Contributions

RB: conceptualization, data collection, data analysis, writing. AB: conceptualization. JJP: conceptualization. JB: conceptualization, HvdV: conceptualization, writing. AvL: conceptualization, data collection, data analysis, writing.

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Correspondence to Roeland A. Bom.

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Bom, R.A., Brader, A., Batsleer, J. et al. A long-term view on recent changes in abundance of common skate complex in the North Sea. Mar Biol 169, 146 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-022-04132-w

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