R. Cabrera-Castro

Universidad de Cádiz | UCA · Departamento de Biología. Facultad de Ciencias del Mar y Ambientales

Otoliths are widely employed in marine sciences to gain insights into fish growth, age, migrations, and population structure. This study investigates the relationships between morphometric measurements, otolith characteristics, and length size patterns in the brown comber ( Serranus hepatus ) from the Gulf of Cádiz, a species discarded in artisanal...

Systematic seafloor surveys are a highly desirable method of marine litter monitoring, but the high costs involved in seafloor sampling are not a trivial handicap. In the present work, we explore the opportunity provided by the artisanal trawling fisheries to obtain systematic data on marine litter in the Gulf of Cadiz between 2019 and 2021. We fin...

Bycatch is a significant issue in global fisheries and understanding the length–weight relationships (LWR) of fish species can provide valuable insights for stock assessment and management efforts. In this study, we estimated the LWR of 74 fish species in trawl fleet discards from the Gulf of Cadiz, including 24 species for which LWR data had not b...

In complex marine socioecosystems, where multiple sectoral activities coexist, management can be especially complicated. This is the case of the coupled Guadalquivir estuary - Gulf of Cadiz (Ge-GoC) system. The Guadalquivir estuary (SW Spain) plays a central role in the whole Gulf of Cadiz since many fish species use these waters as a nursery area....

Understanding how fisheries influence seabird distribution is critical in the development of sustainable fisheries management. Species distribution models were applied to analyse the influence of the fishing footprint, discards, and oceanographic factors on seabird attendance patterns to trawlers in the Gulf of Cádiz. More than 30 species of seabir...

Fishing is one of the most important human activities carried out in the oceans. In 2018, of the 84 million tons of catches, 10% were discards (FAO, 2020). Discards are those specimens of different species that are returned to the sea, dead or alive, due to reasons such as not being target species or not meeting the legal size (Kelleher, 2008; Desp...

The Cubozoa cnidarian class, approximately 40-50 species divided in two orders (Carybdeida and Chirodropida), is mainly located in tropical and subtropical latitudes. In recent years they have been gaining more and more attention from the scientific community and competent administrations due to their interaction with humans, even causing death in...

Several studies have shown the effect of climatic oscillations on fisheries. Small pelagic fish are of special global economic importance and very sensitive to fluctuations in the physical environment in which they live. The main goal of this study was to explore the relationship between the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the East Atlantic patte...

The aim of this paper is to describe the presence of Carybdea marsupialis in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. For this purpose, five beaches in the Gulf of Cadiz were sampled. A total of 534 individuals were found distributed in two periods: 2016–2017 and 2019–2020, whose highest monthly densities were 18.2 ind. 1000 m⁻² and 2.2 ind. 1000 m⁻...

The aim of this study was to identify the patterns of short and medium term variations in fish and macroinvertebrate communities in five sandy beach surf zones on the Cádiz coast (southwest Spain). Sampling was done monthly (December 2016 to November 2017) with a beach seine net with a 5 m long purse-bag at its center. A total of 48 different speci...

The new Common Fisheries Policy introduces the obligation to land all catches, including discarded species. Individuals that are thrown overboard, alive or not, due to, among other reasons, not being target species or not meeting legal sizes, are considered discards (Kelleher, 2008). The objective of this work was to characterize the species discar...

New records of polychaetes for the Atlantic coasts of Cádiz are presented: Glycera tridactyla (Schmarda 1861), Onuphis eremita (Audouin & Milne Edwards 1833), and Sthenelais boa (Johnston 1833). The latter has been recorded on these coasts for the first time. These species have been obtained with a modified manual dredge, in samplings carried out o...

Introduction and Objectives The lack of fishery data for the capture of elasmobranchs, key elements in the regulation of some marine ecosystems (Camhi et al., 2008), puts at risk populations with an unknown current state of conservation, mainly in developing countries, making them susceptible to decline, as shown by world trends. The global statist...

Beaches have traditionally been high productivity habitats. The "surf zone" refers to the area between the coastline and the wave breaking zone (Suda et al., 2002) These areas are often used by the biological community as nurseries due to their high productivity, presence of refuge areas and food availability (Taal et al., 2017). The presence of in...

The within-year dynamics of the juvenile fish community over a shallow nursery seagrass-dominated habitat (Posidonia oceanica) in a Mediterranean Bay was compared between two surveys separated 50 years (1960 and 2012-2013). A nocturnal survey over depths ranging from 2 to 10 m over patched seagrass meadows was conducted for one year (2012-2013) thr...

Intertidal fish are adapted to live in a fluctuating environment and are considered suitable bioindicators of environmental change. Understanding the relationship between fish species distribution and environmental variables is fundamental for comparative analysis among geo- graphical locations and identification of long-term trends predicted by gl...

Sandy beaches, despite of not having a high complexity of habitat, they are used as nurseries by juvenile fishes due to the availability of food. The aim of this work is to study the fish fauna at five beaches on the coast of the Gulf of Cadiz. For this purpose were surveys between December 2016 and November 2017 using a beach seine net in five sam...

Early development of the Adriatic sturgeon Acipenser naccarii from its free embryo after hatching (stage 36), until late embryo stage, when the transition to exogenous feeding starts (stage 45) is described. Special emphasis is given to morphological development and description of the different structures that are formed at each life stage. After h...

Beaches are dynamic transitional environments subject to numerous natural and anthropic alterations. In these ecosystems, the infralittoral-sublittoral macrofauna communities play a key role in the food web. The objective of this study was to compare macrofauna communities on six beaches on the Gulf of Cádiz coast, which were classified according t...

Aquaculture is growing at an accelerating pace due to globalization and the disproportionate increase in human population growth in past decades. Thus, it has become one of the main sources of food globally due to its production capacity which, predictions suggest, could surpass extractive fishing in a few years. This situation has led to the fact...

Arana D, Sanz-Fernández V, Muñoz-Lechuga R, Cabrera R (2016) Analysis of swordfish surface longline fishery in Andalusia, Spain. FiSHMED Fishes in Mediterranean Environments 2016.018:3p.

The present work on the feeding ecology of Scorpaena porcus according to season, sex and size, is the first study carried out in the rocky intertidal in the NE Atlantic. Previous studies were carried out with fish collected in fishing grounds from Mediterranean areas. A total of 106 fish were caught in monthly samplings from April 2008 to July 2010...

Data Mining has become an important technique for the exploration and extraction of data in numerous and various research projects in different fields (technology, information technology, business, the environment, economics, etc.). In the context of the analysis and visualisation of large amounts of data extracted using Data Mining on a temporary...

Un script en R para el desarrollo de Data Mining: aplicación a series temporales.

Análisis y caracterización de las artes de pesca artesanales en el litoral andaluz en función de los modelos de selectividad.

Fisheries products traded in fish markets in the Andalusian (Spain) between January to October2015 was 49.814 T with a market value of € 131,09 million. By fishing gear, the coastal longline fleet in surface represents 3,9 % of the size of the total GT tonnage of the small – scale coastal fleet, with a volume of capture of 549.016,44 kg being 1 % o...

This paper describes the use of resources and diet of nine resident fish species in the rocky intertidal zone of the Gulf of Cadiz and examines whether their populations are affected by trophic competition. A stomach content analysis of the nine species revealed that only one was herbivorous (Parablennius sanguinolentus), while the rest were mainly...

In the Canary Islands, populations of sea urchin Diadema are increasing, partly due to the overfishing of their natural predators. This, together with their reproductive strategy, favors their multiplication worsening the situation of the ecosystem by forming barren grounds. A review of one of these articles reveals a new stage and a possible chang...

Abstract: In the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands, the populations of sea urchin are not stable because of massive extraction and overfishing of natural predators causing an imbalance in the lower trophic levels. There are numerous proposals to control the severals populations of this echinoderm. Among them, we highlight the creation of Mar...

Anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus L.) is one of the species with higher ecological and socioeconomic importance in the Gulf of Cadiz, and this is the reason of being subjected to a very high fishing pressure. Despite the precautions that have been taken in recent years, there is a lack of biological information of that species to allow proper managem...

The sequence and timing of the embryonic development of Adriatic sturgeon (Acipenser naccarii) are described at a constant temperature (17 ± 1 °C), from fertilisation to hatch in a hatchery. Fertilised eggs, obtained from one female and two males, were held in a flow-through system. On the first day, embryos were sampled every 20 min during the fir...

El principal objetivo de este sencillo Manual de prácticas de laboratorio de Biología es ayudar al estudiante en la comprensión del avance que de esta materia se va produciendo en su aprendizaje, primero en el aula, y que continúa hasta ser complementado y experimentado en posteriores prácticas de laboratorio. Todo ello basado en una docencia práct...

Abstract In the Canary Islands populations of a hitherto, sea urchin D. antillarum, are increasing partly due to the existence of overfishing of their natural predators. This, together with a good reproductive strategy of this urchin, favors the multiplication and widespread, extension of their populations worsening the situation of the ecosystem b...

The regulation of minimum sizes of catch is one of the oldest and most widely accepted tools for the management of fisheries. The principal justification that has been given for this measure is that it prevents the fishing of immature individuals. It is a technical measure used to manage fishing, with the object of allowing sufficient numbers of ju...

The Marine Stewardship Council ecolabel, certified sustainable seafood, shows that a fresh or transformed seafood product comes from a natural wild resource managed in an environment friendly way. In order to obtain this ecolabel many criteria must be fulfilled. These are evaluated by a certified body (CB), approved by MSC. The CB is itself evaluat...

Las especies residentes del intermareal se distribuyen a lo largo de un gradiente latitudinal, y es su tolerancia térmica la que marca los límites de su distribución geográfica. El reclutamiento al área, es decir, el número de individuos que incrementan la abundancia de la población, procedentes de la reproducción anterior, es otro de los aspectos...

Los ejemplares de Symphodus roissali, capturados en 3 áreas rocosas costeras de la Bahía de Cádiz, se examinaron para evaluar su crecimiento, sus hábitos alimenticios y reproductivos y las posibles relaciones con la ictiofauna residente y visitante. En total, se capturaron 628 peces desde el año 2003 al 2011. La zona presenta un patrón estacional,...

Scorpaena porcus (Scorpaenidae) es una especie que se distribuye en el Atlántico este, desde el sur de las islas Británicas hasta Senegal y en el Mediterráneo, incluido el mar Negro. Es una especie de interés comercial, explotada fundamentalmente por el sector artesanal y litoral, con trasmallo en el mar Negro y palangre de fondo en el Golfo de Cád...

The regulation of minimum legal size (MLS) of catches is a tool widely applied in the management of fisheries resources, although the MLS does not always coincide with the length at first maturity (LFM). The optimization of this management tool requires a series of quality control in fish markets and transportation. A software application has been...

a b s t r a c t The regulation of minimum legal size (MLS) of catches is a tool widely applied in the management of fisheries resources, although the MLS does not always coincide with the length at first maturity (LFM). The optimization of this management tool requires a series of quality control in fish markets and transportation. A software appli...

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) establishes a framework for the protection of all waters. Transitional waters are functional units with fluctuating and unstable dynamics, which leads to a high abundance and species diversity. The reference condition for a water body is the description of the biological quality elements that...

Analysing historical citations and the specimens preserved in museums, as well as zoological collections in France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, the historical and current distributions of sturgeons in southern Europe have been studied, using morphological and genetic techniques. Errors were found in the classification of specimens of non-Adriatic o...

A study has been carried out of the fisheries of sardine (Sardina pilchardus) and anchovy (Engraulis encrasicholus) of the Iberian South Atlantic region, specifically the Gulf of Cádiz and the Algarve. The perspectives of the study are both biological and socioeconomic, with the starting point being actual catches landed at the various ports of the...