A close look at monitoring data reveals avenues for change to support bycatch analyses

There is widespread recognition that existing regulatory and advisory systems for fisheries management in Canada influence our ability to address ecosystem-level objectives, particularly relative to bycatch mitigation. However, the monitoring programs, information storage systems (i.e. databases) and data extraction workflows used for fisheries analyses have rarely been considered in this context. Management goals for bycatch mitigation represent a substantial departure from the original objectives used to structure monitoring programs and their associated databases. Using a detailed example from multispecies groundfish fleets in Atlantic Canada, we demonstrate that the way information from fisheries is stored, as well as the analytical workflows used to identify and summarize information from commercial fishing trips, complicate research on bycatch. Employing the same workflow and data extraction process to answer all types of fisheries management questions is fraught with pitfalls. We hope this perspective will inform the way in which bycatch analyses are incorporated into Canadian fisheries management, and provide the impetus to redesign current data management systems to meet emerging fisheries challenges in Canada.