Discard survival of coastal elasmobranchs in a small-scale fishery using acoustic telemetry and recapture data

6 pages, 1 table, 6 figuresDiscard reduction is a cornerstone of the European Common Fisheries Policy. The discard ban policy, which aims to reduce fisheries discards, is particularly challenging for small-scale fisheries. Demonstrating high survival rates of discarded individuals may provide flexibility to the application of the discard ban through the so-called survival exemption. Here we used acoustic telemetry and mark-recapture data to estimate discard survival of coastal elasmobranch species at multiple temporal scales. We focused on four species targeted by the small-scale fishery in Galicia (NW Spain), one of the most important fishing regions in Europe: Scyliorhinus canicula, Raja undulata, Raja clavata and Raja brachyura. The overall survival rate was 90% on the short term and 85.7% on the long term, but it varied among species. Survival rates of R. clavata and S. canicula on the short term were 70% and 100%, respectively, and 66.7% and 92.9% on the long term, respectively. All the individuals of R. brachyura and R. undulata survived on the long term. Our results are critical to support the application of survival exemption in small scale fisheriesThis study was funded by the DESTAC project with the collaboration of the Fundación Biodiversidad, from the Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico (Spanish Government), through the pleamar programme (2019), cofounded by the Fondo Europeo Marítimo y de Pesca (FEMP). This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 793627 (BEMAR) and from the programme IF_ERC from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) granted to David Villegas-RíosPeer reviewe