An integrative taxonomy approach for the identification of fish bycatch in the Antarctic krill fishery

To help inform management decisions in the Antarctic krill fishery, we have taken an integrative taxonomic approach to producing a taxonomically and ecologically informative set of identification materials for fisheries observers. We investigated taxonomic uncertainties of fish bycatch reported between 2022 and 2024 as well as making use of the extensive biological archive at British Antarctic Survey (BAS). We coupled this with a systematic search of the literature on timings of larval and juvenile fish in the water column to bring together molecular and ecological information in one place to help identify fish bycatch. Here we present preliminary results of molecular identifications of bycatch fish species, in two phylogenies reconstructed from partial sequences of two mitochondrial regions (cox1 and control region). We observed coherence between molecular identification of samples and reference sequences, which provided confidence in the accuracy of the fish identification used to produce the identification materials. However, we found it difficult to extract or find data for larval and juvenile timings in the water column, which may help observers narrow down the range of possible species present at certain times of the year or location. We provide the first draft of the identification guide layout. A key recommendation from the work is that future research should follow the FAIR principles for reporting scientific data: findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuseable. This may help incorporate scientific information collected under different scenarios being used in ways that may not have been anticipated during the original collection and publication but are valuable for stakeholders, managers and decision makers. The integrative taxonomic approach used in this project has enabled the collation of existing identification material with genetic species assignments; in combination with the systematic review of available literature, the resulting guide will represent the most comprehensive source of information available to fishery observers.