Seagrass macroinvertebrate bycatches of the mosquito net trawl fishery in the Bay of Toliara, Madagascar (2018-2019): survey data and code

The bay of Toliara (Madagascar) shelters diverse macroinvertebrate communities in seagrass beds. This study aims to improve the knowledge of the diversity, abundance, and socioeconomic role of the seagrass macrobenthos in that area. We studied the mosquito net trawl fishery in seagrass areas in the Bay through the GPS tracking of fishers in 2018-2019. Catches were monitored through monthly landing surveys to characterize spatial temporal patterns in the abundance and diversity of macroinvertebrates in the seagrass beds. Temporal effects (tide (spring/neap), months, and interaction terms) on the mean density and biomass of macroinvertebrate taxa were investigated through a generalized linear model (GLM) using the function « lm » (with a Poisson distribution) of the R software v.3.6.3. We provide here i) the survey data on seagrass macroinvertebrates collected in 2018-2019 in the Bay of Toliara, Madagascar using fishers' mosquito net trawls and ii) the R code used for statistical processing.