An Overview

• The Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) studied the deep-water and demersal fish populations to the west of the British Isles between 1975 and 1999.
• These investigations formed part of a larger study which includes the pelagic and benthic biota and the physics of the Rockall Trough. Most of the studies have centred on an area of the continental slope to the west of the Hebrides and the emphasis was on seasonal and depth distributions, age, growth, reproduction and feeding ecology. 
• Catchability by different sampling methods was always a key part of the research programme.
• The investigations took place at a time when there was increasing interest in the commercial exploitation of deep-water fishes and also against a background of growing awareness of the ecosystem effects of these fisheries.
• SAMS has undertaken a number of contracts for organisations such as the:
  • European Commission
  • the UK Highlands and Islands Enterprise
  • the UK Joint Nature Conservation Council (JNCC)
• Dr John Gordon chaired the ICES Study Group on the Biology and Assessment of Deep-Sea Fisheries Resources between 1995 and 2000. He also represented ICES at an ‘Open Hearing’ on deep-water fishes, hosted by the European Commission (EC) on behalf of the Northeast Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) in 1999. He was an invited expert at a NEAFC special meeting on deep-water fisheries in Bergen , Norway in 2002. He was an invited participant in the 2001 EC Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries meeting on deep-sea fisheries. In 2002 he gave a presentation to an Industry Meeting at the European Commission Directorate-General for Fisheries.
• He was co-convenor of the Annual International Symposium of the Fisheries Society of the British Isles (FSBI) in Aberdeen in 1996. The theme was deep-water fish and the proceedings were published as a supplement to the Journal of Fish Biology in December 1996. To coincide with the completion of a three-year Deep-fisheries project that was part funded by the European Commission, Dr Gordon was co-convenor of a theme session on deep-water fish and fisheries at the 1998 ICES Annual Science Conference in Lisbon .  He was guest editor of a special issue of Fisheries Research (Volume 51, parts 2-3) where a selection of 27 papers were published. Dr Gordon was co-convenor of the NAFO Symposium on deep-sea fisheries which was held in Cuba in September 2001 and joint editor of the proceedings which were published in volume 31 of the Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Science ( http://www.nafo.ca/).
• SAMS has also collaborated on studies of the fish populations of the Porcupine Seabight with Dr Nigel Merrett, formerly head of the fish section at the Natural History Museum in London .
• SAMS analysed the fish collected as part of the BIOFAR (Benthic Biology of the Faroe Islands ) Project and has participated in studies of the deep-water fishes of the Skagerrak and the Norwegian Continental slope carried out by Dr Odd Aksel Bergstad of the Institute for Marine Research, Norway .
• In 1994 the Seafish Industry Authority and SAMS organised an International Advanced Research Workshop on North Atlantic deep-water fisheries. The meeting was funded by NATO and the European Commission and the proceedings were published in 1995 as part of the NATO ASI series. Dr John Gordon was the 1994 Buckland Professor and in 1995 gave both written and oral evidence on deep-water fisheries to the House of Lords Select Committee on Fish Stock Conservation and Management. He also gave evidence to the Royal Society of Edinburgh Scottish Fishing Inquiry in 2003.
• Dr Gordon retired at the end of 2002 and became an Honorary Fellow of SAMS. He has given keynote and invited lectures at the World Conference on Deep Sea Fishing, Vigo, Spain; The FAO workshop on Assessment and Management of Deepwater Fisheries, Dunedin, New Zealand; Deep-Sea 2003, Queenstown, New Zealand; World Fishing Congress, Vancouver, Canada and the Deep-sea Fisheries: ecology, economics and conservation meeting, Woods Hole, USA. From January to April 2004 he was on sabbatical at the Instituto Mediterráneo Estudios Avanzados (IMEDEA) in Esporles, Mallorca . In 2003 he became a joint editor of Oceanography and Marine Biology: an Annual Review.