Glossary of Fishery Terms - L

L

• La Niña - a condition involving an excessive pooling of cool water which occurs in the equatorial Eastern Pacific Ocean. See El Niño.

• Lagoon - a body of shallow salt or brackish water separated from the deeper sea by a shallow or exposed sandbank, coral reef, or similar feature.

• Land runoff - rainfall, snow melt or irrigation water that runs off the land into streams and other surface water, and ultimately into the ocean. Land runoff can carry pollutants, such as petroleum, pesticides, and fertilizers.

• Landing - the amount of fish (usually in tons) harvested from the sea and brought to the land. May be different from the catch, which includes the discards. Landings are reported at the points at which fish are brought to shore. Most often, landings provide the only record of total catch, i.e. landings plus discards. Note landings, catch, and harvest define different things.

• Line fishing - a general term for fishing methods which use fishing lines. It includes handlines, hand reels, powered reels, pole-and-line, droplines, longlines, trotlines and troll lines.

• Littoral - the shallow water region around lake or sea shores where significant light penetrates to the bottom. Typically occupied by rooted plants. On sea shores it includes the intertidal zone.

• Logbook - an official record of catch and its species composition, fishing effort and location, recorded on board the fishing vessel. In many fisheries, logbooks are a compulsory condition of licensing.

• Longlines - a long fishing line with many short lines, called snoods and carrying hooks, attached at regular intervals. Pelagic longlines are suspended horizontally at a fixed depth using surface floats. Demersal longlines are weighted at the seabed and have closer-spaced hooks. A longline can be miles long with several thousand hooks.