Chapter 7 The Impact of Fisheries Discards on Scavengers in the Sea Jochen Depestele, Jordan Feekings, David G. Reid, Robin Cook, Didier Gascuel, Raphael Girardin, Michael Heath, Pierre-Yves Hernvann, Telmo Morato, Ambre Soszynski, and Marie Savina-Rolland Abstract A scavenger is an animal that feeds on dead animals (carrion) that it has not killed itself. Fisheries discards are often seen as an important food source for marine scavengers so the reduction of discards due to the Landing Obligation may affect their populations. The literature on scavenging in marine ecosystems is considerable, due to its importance in the trophic ecology of many species. Although discards undoubtedly contribute to these species’ food sources, few can be seen to be solely dependent on carrion (including discards). Ecosystem models predicted that discards contributed very little to the diet of scavengers at a regional scale. A reduction in discards through the Landing Obligation may therefore affect Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter (https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-030-03308-8_7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. J. Depestele (*) Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), Oostende, Belgium e-mail:
[email protected] J. Feekings National Institute of Aquatic Resources, DTU Aqua, Technical University of Denmark, Hirtshals, Denmark D. G. Reid Marine Institute, Oranmore, County Galway, Ireland R. Cook · M. Heath Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK D. Gascuel · P.-Y. Hernvann Université Bretagne Loire, Agrocampus Ouest, UMR 985 Ecology and Ecosystem Health, Rennes, France R. Girardin Ifremer, Channel and North Sea Fisheries Research Unit, Boulogne sur Mer, France T.