Preliminary assessment of the impact on UK seabird populations of mortality from incidental bycatch occurring in UK waters

As a first step to develop and implement a UK Plan of Action on incidental bycatch of seabirds in UK waters, an assessment is required of the impact of bycatch on UK seabird populations. To date no comprehensive assessment has been made, so the scale of any "problem" is unclear, as are what management or further monitoring should be sought (if any) and how bycatch should be prioritised in relation to other pressures.

The aims of the Project are:

Estimates of overall mortality of marine birds (species by species) occurring within UK marine waters will be provided to the contractor (to be delivered under a separate contract), using estimates of bycatch rates from the Protected Species Bycatch Monitoring Programme and estimates of fishing effort.

The main challenges of this work are incomplete knowledge/understanding in four areas:

The proposed contract is to account for lack of knowledge and uncertainty around the above parameters, using the general approach of running a range of plausible scenarios, even though we don't know which scenario is closest to reality. This allows us to investigate under which scenarios bycatch would be a problem, requiring for example further monitoring and/or management.

Additional information: You are invited by JNCC Support Co (JNCC) to submit a tender for the supply of works or services required under the above project. If interested, you should download and carefully read the documents contained within the zip file or by following the link.http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-7698