The by-catch from the artisanal shrimp trawl fishery, Gulf of Paria, Trinidad.

Introduction

The continental shelf of northeastern South America is a highly productive fishing zone extending from east Venezuela to east of the Amazon River (Naidu and Boerema, 1972). The annual shrimp landings range from 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 kg (Villegas and Dragovich, 1984). However, an estimated yearly average of 200,000,000 kg of demersal finfish-catch is thought to be discarded in this region (Jones and Villegas, 1980). For the western central Atlantic region, Klima (1976), concluded that the shrimp fisheries discarded approximately 1,000,000,000 kg of…