Estimating the extent and impact of bait use in a UK coastal fishery

With the rise in crustacean fisheries globally and nationally, often driven by an increasing legislative burden on mobile gear fisheries, there are likely to be substantial changes in our coastal ecosystems, in part due to the large quantities of bait being added to the ecosystem. Simultaneously, coastal and small-scale fishermen are evermore restricted in what they can target by often convoluted, unresponsive, and retrospective management. We assessed the potential impact of bait inputs to a crustacean fishery in the UK, with a view to better understanding the potential supplement to the diets of commercial species, and how management measures such as pot limitations might impact the fishery. Our estimates suggest that pot numbers exceed 70 000 and collectively introduce over 800 tonnes of bait per year to an area approximately 820 km 2. Therefore, we propose that pot bait is likely to be a significant supplement to the food web in some areas and suggest that the relationship between the deployment of pots and their interaction with commercial species could cause increasingly heterogenous spatial distributions of lobsters and crabs.