NOTE Erzini et al.: Catches in ghost-fishing octopus and fish traps in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean 
327 
the traps. However, in order to be able to fully evalu- 
ate the effects of ghost fishing from the large number 
of traps that are lost each year in the coastal waters of 
southern Portugal, it will be necessary to investigate 
escapement rates, and to estimate mortality rates. Such 
investigations can be done by tagging trapped fish and 
monitoring their escapement and survival by divers. 
Bycatch and ghost fishing mitigation measures for 
traps generally involve the use of escape mechanisms 
and the use of degradable materials (e.g., Scarsbrook et 
al., 1988). In the case of the fish traps, mitigation op- 
tions are limited because the entire trap is made from 
wire and the trap door is on the bottom of the trap. 
Octopus traps have a hatch that can be attached with 
degradable material and the plastic netting could be 
replaced with biodegradable netting. However, perhaps 
the most important measure to reduce mortality would 
be the implementation of a code of conduct leading to 
less gear loss from gear interaction and theft. 
Acknowledgments 
This work was funded in part by the European Union 
(Project reference: FAIR-PL98-4338). We would like to 
thank P. Breen and an anonymous referee for their com- 
ments that helped improve the manuscript. We would 
like to thank C. Flor and I. Costa of the fishing vessel 
Zequinha for their help with the preparation, setting, 
retrieval, and monitoring of the traps and for help with 
the diving operations. 
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