What can exploratory modelling tell us about the ecobiology of European sea bass ( Dicentrarchus labrax ): a comprehensive overview

European sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax, is a highly valuable species in Europe, both for aquaculture in the Mediterranean Sea and for commercial and recreational fisheries in the North East Atlantic Ocean. Subjected to increasing fishing pressure, the wild population has recently experienced significant recruitment fluctuation as well as a northward extension of its distribution area in the North Sea. While the nature of the ecological and/or physiological processes involved remains unresolved, ontogenetic habitat shifts and adult site fidelity could increase the species’ vulnerability to climate change and overfishing. As managers look for expert information to propose management scenarios leading to sustainable exploitation, exploratory modelling appears to be a cost-efficient approach to enhance the understanding of recruitment dynamics and the spatio-temporal scales over which fish populations function. A conceptual modelling framework and its specific data requirements are discussed to tackle some sound ecological questions regarding this species. We consequently provide an updated review of current knowledge on bass population structure, biology and ecology. This paper will hence be particularly valuable to develop spatially-explicit models of European sea bass dynamics under environmental and anthropogenic forcing. Knowledge gaps requiring further research efforts are also reported.

GenoPopTaille. Moving stock assessment into the future

At the ecosystem level, sustainable exploitation of fisheries resources depends not only on the status of target species but also on that of bycatch species, some of which are even more sensitive to exploitation. This is the case for a number of elasmobranchs (skates, rays and sharks) species whose abundance declined during the 20th century. Further, the biology of elamobranchs is still poorly known and traditional fisheries stock assessment methods using fisheries catches and scientific survey data for estimating abundance are expensive or even inapplicable due to the small numbers observed. The GenoPopTaille project attempts to apply to the case of the thornback ray (Raja clavata) recent genetic-based methods for absolute population abundance estimation as well as characterizing its genetic diversity and population structure in the Northeast Atlantic. The poster will present the objectives, challenges and progress made so far by the project.