2006 Strategic Environmental Assessment SEA7 An Overview of Cephalopods Relevant to the SEA7 Area (NE Atlantic west of Scotland)

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British Geological Survey (BGS)
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15 March 2024
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Summary

This report is a contribution to the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA7) conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry (now Department of Energy and Climate Change).The class Cephalopoda comprises three major divisions, of which two: Decapoda (squids and cuttlefish) and Octopoda (octopods) are represented in the SEA 7 Area. They are highly developed, but short-lived molluscs with rapid growth rates. They are important elements in marine food webs and interact significantly with marine mammals, seabirds and commercially exploited finfish species. They also represent a promising future fishery resource in terms of market value, abundance and growth potential.

At present, only an estimated 10% of exploitable stocks are utilised worldwide. There are six marketable squid species that occur in the SEA 7 Area. These belong to the long-fin (loliginid) and short-fin (Ommastrephid) squids the two most important exploited families of decpods. In the SEA 7 Area, only one species, Loligo forbesi is commercially exploited on a regular basis, although there are significant landings of other species on occasion. The closely related Loligo vulgaris sometimes appears in catches and the small Alloteuthis subulata is thought to be naturally abundant and an important food item in the marine ecosystem.

There are other important species represented in the SEA 7 Area. These include cuttlefish, octopods, sepiolids and a number of deep-water species. Most of these are marketable and may be ecologically important. Large fisheries for some of these species, particularly octopods and cuttlefish operate in European waters further south, but they are not currently exploited in the SEA 7 Area.

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Added to data.gov.uk
2011-08-30
Access contraints
Not specified
Harvest GUID
aba64100-c15b-4de3-e044-0003ba6f30bd
Extent
Latitude: 60.2° to 55.2°
Longitude: -24° to -5°
Spatial reference system
urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
Dataset reference date
2006-05-10 (publication)
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Responsible party
British Geological Survey (BGS) (custodian); Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) (originator)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

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Licence information

The SEAs data were produced as part of the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change's Offshore Energy Strategic Environmental Assessment programme; Crown Copyright, all rights reserved. The DECC SEA must be acknowledged in any maps or publications that make use of the data. All the data files are freely available to the public. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) data portal provides free access to available data and reports which have been produced through the SEA process. The site is run and managed by BGS on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Many files can be downloaded directly from this website. Those that are too large to download can be ordered via the website for postal delivery from BGS. BGS (NERC) has been contracted by DECC to publish SEA datasets on its behalf. All intellectual property rights (including , without limitation, copyrights, database rights and all other rights which subsist or may at any time in the future subsist in the Dataset(s)) in the Dataset(s) ('Intellectual Property Rights') are owned by DECC (formerly the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform). BGS has been authorised by DECC to use SEA datasets for all purposes but on a 'not-for-profit basis'. BGS has been authorised by DECC to pass on SEA datasets to third parties so that they can use them for all purposes but on a 'not-for-profit' basis.