Reconstruction of marine fisheries catches for Madeira Island, Portugal from 1950-2010

The reconstruction of total marine fisheries catches for the islands of Madeira for 1950-2010 added estimates of unreported subsistence and recreational catches, as well as discards to the reported commercial fisheries landings obtained from official statistics.

While there are suggestions that commercial fisheries (e.g. black-scabbard fish fishery) also produce unreported catches, we were not able to estimate these at this point. Total estimated fisheries catches taken by Madeira from the Madeiran EEZ were around 460,000 tonnes for the 1950-2010 period, increasing from around 2,300 t in 1950 to a peak of 15,000 t in 1995, before declining to around 5,400 t by 2010. Estimated total catches were 16% higher than the approximately 395,000 tonnes reported in official statistics