A short guide to the identification of fish, cephalopod and marine mammal depredation marks on Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish in the Southern Ocean longline fisheries

Within the CCAMLR Area, the toothfish longline fishery is subject to depredation by top predators using the fishery as a source of additional food provisioning in several subareas. Depredation by toothed whales is well observed and documented in some subareas, but information on depredation by other species is not consistently or regularly recorded throughout the CCAMLR Area. This paper presents a first guide of identifiable depredation marks left by different predators such as characteristic cuts, wounds and suckers’ imprints as an identification aide and supporting tool to the CCAMLR observers to simplify collection of depredation data.