Internal injuries in marine fishes caught in beam trawls using electrical versus mechanical stimulations

To improve the ecological and economic sustainability in the Dutch beam trawl fishery, tickler chains were replaced by electrical pulse stimulation to drive sole (Solea solea) out of the seabed. Because electrical stimulation may cause internal injuries, we quantified this risk by sampling fish species from commercial beam trawlers and recording spinal injuries and haemorrhages from X-radiographs and autopsy. To distinguish mechanically and electrical-pulse-induced injuries, we compared injuries in ten species sampled from pulse (PUL) and tickler-chain (TCK) trawlers and four species sampled from PUL trawlers with the stimulus switched on or off. Co-occurrence of a major spinal injury and major haemorrhage at the same location was only observed in PUL samples, and were frequently (40%) observed in cod (Gadus morhua) and in low numbers (0–2%) in whiting (Merlangius merlangus), grey gurnard (Eutrigla gurnardus), and greater sandeel (Hyperoplus lanceolatus), but not in flatfishes and other..., See the manuscript mentioned at the end of this section for details on the creation of this data set. Description of column headers is provided in a separate data sheet: see \"Usage notes\".

Boute, P.G., Rijnsdorp, A.D., van Leeuwen, J.L., Pieters, R.P.M., Lankheet, M.J. (2023). Internal injuries in marine fishes caught in beam trawls using electrical versus mechanical stimulations. ICES Journal of Marine Science. DOI: 10.1093/icesjms/fsad064.

, Three files are included:

Boute-et-al-2023_IJMS_injury-dataset_all.csv: contains the data used in Boute et al. (2023).
Boute-et-al-2023_IJMS_injury-dataset_codebook.csv: contains description of the column headers in the file \"Boute-et-al-2023_IJMS_injury-dataset_all.csv\".
README.md: contains information on the data set.