Lorena Couce Montero

Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria | ULPGC · Department of Biology

We report the first case of partial albinism in the Critically Endangered Angelshark, Squatina squatina. The encounter with this specimen took place while SCUBA diving on the beach of Tufia, located on the east coast of the island of Gran Canaria on April 2, 2021. This is also the first confirmed finding of an albino elasmobranch specimen in the Ca...

The presence of spiny butterfly rays, Gymnura altavela, in waters less than 20 m deep off the Canary Islands shows marked seasonality, with relatively high abundances in the summer and autumn. Large aggregations of sometimes hundreds of individuals, primarily females, appear in specific shallow areas of the archipelago and seem to be associated wit...

Percnon gibbesi is a native crab species characteristic of intertidal and subtidal zones of the Atlantic coast of the European Macaronesian archipelagos (Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands), and probably also in the neighbouring rocky coasts of northwest Africa. P. gibbesi is considered an invasive alien species in almost all of the Mediterranean,...

This is the first study addressing validation of the early growth stages (including the first increment) in the beaks of juvenile cuttlefishes. The age validation in juveniles of Sepia officinalis was performed by comparison of the number of increments observed in the rostrum surface of lower jaws with their true age. A total of 159 individuals wer...

Canary Islands, in particular Gran Canaria Island, show spiny butterfly ray aggregative behaviour in different beaches, and it seems to be related with the temperature variation.

Telemetry is a technique used to safeguard the misinformation about elasmobranchs, in this case acoustic tags are being used to find out the presence of spiny butterfly ray on the coast of Gran Canaria

The common cuttlefish Sepia officinalis is one of the most important species for cephalopod fisheries in many countries along the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. Knowledge of the life cycle of the species is essential for understanding of its population structure and promoting sustainable management of the resource. Age and growth studi...

The African cuttlefish Sepia bertheloti is fished on the West African coast, often mixed with S. officinalis and/or S. hierredda. As in other marine fished species, the sustainable management of their populations begins with the understanding of the species life-cycle. Wild-caught samples of S. bertheloti from the same season and two different fish...

Introducción: El tiburón Angelote (Squatina squatina) también conocido como peje ángel en el archipiélago canario, es una especie de tiburón bentónico que se puede encontrar en toda la zona costera de las Islas Canarias. La especie está clasificada, por la Lista Roja de UICN, como en peligro crítico de extinción, debido principalmente a la sobrepes...

Introducción: La Mantelina, Gymnura altavela (Linnaeus, 1758), catalogada como vulnerable en el atlántico y en peligro crítico en el mediterráneo (Lista Roja de la UICN), ha sufrido y un agotamiento importante debido a la presión pesquera en los últimos 50 años, tanto por el sector profesional como por el sector de la pesca recreativo, debido a que...

Covid-19 pandemic has affected worldwide in many different ways. Fisheries around the world are not an exception due to the long term isolation and the non-activities period suffered. To do an evaluation of its impact on the fishing sectors in the Canary Islands, 87 online and phone questionnaires were carried out between July and September 2020, c...

The ecological system conformed by the islands of Tenerife and La Gomera (Canary Islands) is characterized though the trophic network. The indicators obtained by the Ecopath model show a stressed and still developing ecosystem, probably related to inadequate management of the fisheries that takes place in this area, focused on high trophic level sp...

We use a stochastic frontier approach to estimate the technology and the technical efficiency of a sample of small-scale fishing boats in the Spanish island of Gran Canaria. Using a model that allows for the determinants of inefficiency, we find that boat efficiency increases with boat size while it is inversely related to the age of the vessel. We...

In this paper we consider what may happen to the marine ecosystem of Gran Canaria Island within the 2030 horizon, if fishing strategies different from those currently in place were implemented and we evaluate the effect of, for example, reduction of recreational–artisanal fishing, limitation of catches (e.g. total allowable catches, TAC), or spatia...

A mass-balance trophic model was built in order to describe the impact of the different fleets that operate in the Gran Canaria marine ecosystem between 2005 and 2010. This is the first food-web model developed in the Canary Islands, and results were presented and compared with other ecosystems that have been modeled in Atlantic and Mediterranean c...