Mortalities of fish escaping from square and diamond mesh codends in the Aegean Sea

We investigated the survival of red mullet (Mullus barbatus), annular seabream (Diplodus annularis), and blotched picarel (Spicara maena) escaping from 40 mm square and 40 mm diamond mesh codends in the Aegean Sea. A low mortality for red mullet and blotched picarel was observed, and annular seabream had no mortality for two different codends. Red mullet mortality for diamond mesh codends was greater than square mesh codends. The estimate of the mean survival rate of square mesh codends for red mullet was 95.1%, while diamond mesh codends were 81.2%. For blotched picarel, the mean proportion surviving in the 3 square mesh codends was 96.5%, whereas it was 91.2% for diamond mesh codends. Mean survival percentages of brown comber (Serranus hepatus) were 96.7 and 94.6 for square and diamond mesh codends, respectively. Mortalities of scaldfish (Arnoglossus laterna) and survival rates of common pandora (Pagellus erythrinus) were 100.0% for all the cages.