Most of the area surveys mentioned above have monitoring of commercial fish species as their main objective. The different fish stocks and life stages are targeted at these surveys. In addition to catch data, the surveys are the main data source for the assessment of the stocks. Data on non-target fish species (abundance, weight, length distribution etc.) have also been collected on these surveys during the last ten years.
Among additional sources of information are biological data collected by Russian observers onboard commercial fishing vessels, and some regular fishing vessels with special reporting demands acting as reference vessels.
