The mesh selectivity of gill net for Japanese sandfish (Arctoscopus japonicus) caught in the East Sea, Korea was described. The experiment was conducted with five different kinds of mesh size (39.4, 45.5, 51.5, 53.0, 57.6mm) between November and December 2006 in spawning season. The catch was mostly Japanese sandfish (93.3%) and some others (6.7%), and almost all of the female Japanese sandfish were larger than the fork length at 50% maturity (16.7cm). The selection curve for the female Japanese sandfish caught from the experiments was fitted by the Kitahara's method to a polynomial equation which was s(R)=exp{(0.2584R3-5.3445R2+32.269R-59.868)-0.6585} where R＝l/m, and l and m are fork length and mesh size, respectively.

The investigation for the species composition and catch in the deep East Sea was carried out with commercial trawlers from 2004 to 2006. The catches were 6,043kg and were composed of 43 species with 34 hauls between 250m and 1,030m in depth. The principal species caught were Allolepis hollandi, red crab (Chionoecetes japonicus), Careproctus rastrinus, Argis lar, Chionoecetes opilio, Malacocottus gibber, Petroschmidtia toyamensis, Pandalus eous Makarov, and Dasycottus setiger. The rate of discarded catches in situ was about 50%. The diversity indexes of 2005 and 2006 were 1.152 and 0.878, respectively, and the evenness indexes at those years were 0.752 and 0.583, respectively, which implied one dominant species caught in 2006.