Quantifying the impacts of ice on demersal longlining in CCAMLR Subarea 88.1 with updated information on the 2014/15 season

The effect of sea ice is acknowledged as a major influence on fishing operations in high latitudes but not widely understood in detail other than by fishers and specialists in Antarctic fisheries research and management. A retrospective analysis over a 15 year period up to the 2013/14 season was presented in WG-FSA-14/55 to quantify the level of impact that ice conditions have on fishing by creating an annual fishability index. We update the analysis for the 2015 season, a challenging ice year for fishing ranking overall as the third worst in the sixteen-year series. We recommend that the fishability index be incorporated into the Ross Sea fishery report.