Fishing effects in northeast Atlantic shelf seas: patterns in fishing effort, diversity and community structure. I. Introduction

Traditionally, fisheries scientists were concerned with the effects of fishing on the dynamics of exploited stocks. In recent years, however, interest in the wider effects of fishing on community structure, diversity, ecosystem processes and the abundance of non-target fishes, invertebrates, birds and marine mammals has burgeoned. In this Special Issue of Fisheries Research we present an introduction to effects of fishing on marine ecosystems followed by six related papers that describe patterns in fishing effort, diversity and community structure in northeast Atlantic shelf seas. The papers describe the patchiness of fishing effort in space and time, the relative roles of fishing and biogeography in explaining fish community structure, potential biases when trawl samples are used to determine long-term trends in fish communities and the effects of fishing on the diverse invertebrate assemblages associated with tube worms. Crown copyright (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.