The Atlantic Gateway proposal of a standardized long term monitoring of benthos: The CBMP Marine Benthos Expert Network

Abstract

"This document identifies marine benthos monitoring possibilities amongst Atlantic Arctic nations- Greenland, Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands- by identifying time- and cost-effective possibilities. All the countries in the Atlantic area have annually monitoring of commercial fish-stock in there national waters. Authors encourage the nations to also identify the benthic component of the trawl catch, and that this is done by a standardized method among the nations via a benthic expert exchange program added to the fish research vessels. The document identifies that this is possible by adding two benthic experts on each of the vessels in the already existing national surveys. This will increase the total budget with hours at sea for the added persons, and for hours for one person on land to analyze the data."