NIOZ fyke programme Stuifdijk

The Royal NIOZ collects data on the Wadden Sea fish community using traditional fixed gear at a specific location (Lat 52.997N, Long 4.775E) since 1960. The fixed gear is known as a 'kom-fyke' and is a passive fish trap consisting of a 200-m net running from the beach towards deeper waters (the stretched mesh size is 20 mm). This net guides migrating fish towards 2 chambers / traps and into a fyke where they can be collected. The catch is collected each day in spring (late March to early July) and in fall (late August to early November) and netting is removed in the summer (due to algae) and winter (due to storms). This data summarises the catch information as seasonal catch per unit effort (total numbers of fish caught per season, divided by the total number of fishing days in the season), for each year 1980-2019. Seasons are spring and fall, as defined above. NB Dec 2025: datafile was corrected to include a larger period of years, two fyke locations (1 = Stuifdijk and 3 = Schanserwaard), and a data correction due to earlier errors.