Fladen Grounds Benthic Recovery Data from 2015 Beam Trawl Surveys

Total count and biomass in grams of seabed taxa from 2m beam trawl samples collected during a fishing impact recovery survey. Data were collected at three time points (before, immediately after, and 8 months after impact) during two research surveys on the RV Cefas Endeavour in April and November 2015. The dataset includes associated station information from three experimental treatment boxes within the Fladen Grounds.

Use Cases

• Modeling benthic community recovery rates based on the three distinct sampling time points.
• Assessing the impact of fishing gear on specific taxa biomass and count data.
• Analyzing spatial variation in impact and recovery across the three experimental treatment boxes mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Data collection follows a controlled experimental design with three defined time points for impact assessment.
• Samples were collected using a standardized 2m scientific beam trawl across two dedicated research surveys.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Samples collected using a 2m scientific beam trawl from the RV Cefas Endeavour.

Time Range

2015 (specifically April and November surveys)

Freshness

Data is from 2015; last update date is unknown.

Geography

Fladen Grounds, North Sea