Catch and by-catch composition of the shrimp fishery by beam trawl in the southeastern Marmara Sea

This study has been conducted over a period of one year between November 2000-October 2001 in the southeastern Marmara Sea. In addition to the weight and abundance distribution of the deepwater rose shrimp Parapenaeus longirostris which form the prime target species of the beam-trawl, the composition of the by-catch, length distribution of species caught and their numerical abundance ratios in the total catch were investigated. The pooled data indicated that the target species Parapenaeus longirostris formed 64.5% and the by-catch the remaining 35.5% of the total catch. Of the total 50 species that make the by-catch, 17.16% belong to Osteichthyes, 8.58% to Crustacea & Decapoda, 4.94% to Echinodermata, 2.53% Mollusca, 2.14% to Cnidaria and finally 0.13% to Chondrichthyes. It was observed that Goby, Whiting, Flounder, Crab, Sea-star and Sea cucumber formed the majority of the total catch after Parapenaeus longirostris.