Discard sampling of the Dutch pelagic freezer fishery in 2003-2007

This report contains the results of the discard sampling programme on the Dutch pelagic trawl fisheries in the North East Atlantic in the period 2003-2007, which was instigated as part of the EC regulation 1543/2000 and 1639/2001 on data collection in European waters. Five to twelve trips were sampled per year. The present study suggests that, with the exception of mackerel, discarding of target species on an annual level (includes discard data of season) in the pelagic freezer fleet is low. Concluding that this fishery has a high level of efficiency when targeting fish