Marine fish stocks are an important part of the world food system and are particularly important for many of the poorest people of the world. Most existing analyses suggest overfishing is increasing, ...and there is widespread concern that fish stocks are decreasing throughout most of the world. We assembled trends in abundance and harvest rate of stocks that are scientifically assessed, constituting half of the reported global marine fish catch. For these stocks, on average, abundance is increasing and is at proposed target levels. Compared with regions that are intensively managed, regions with less-developed fisheries management have, on average, 3-fold greater harvest rates and half the abundance as assessed stocks. Available evidence suggests that the regions without assessments of abundance have little fisheries management, and stocks are in poor shape. Increased application of area-appropriate fisheries science recommendations and management tools are still needed for sustaining fisheries in places where they are lacking.
This work presents a methodological synthesis for the in situ monitoring of fish aggregating devices (FADs) using a combination of optical, echosounder and SCUBA observations conducted in the ...vicinity of drifting FADs. The acoustic methods allowed, according to the devices used, the description of the spatial organisation and dynamics of biotic scattering layers, individual fishes, schools, shoals and mammals, while visual, photographic and video observations permitted species identification within a range of 0 to ~ 25 m. Based on these results, we elaborate on the interest to combine acoustic and visual methods, and present an autonomous instrumented drifting buoy for remotely monitoring fish diversity and abundance in the pelagic ecosystems. The perspective of autonomously collecting large amounts of basic information useful for ecological and fisheries studies in an ecosystem approach for open sea, as well as coastal pelagic environment, is also emphasized. As perspective we present “Seaorbiter” a futuristic large drifting platform which will allow performing innovative ecosystemic studies taking into account simultaneously all macro components of the pelagic ecosystem.
The article “Towards an Autonomous Pelagic Observatory: Experiences from Monitoring Fish Communities around Drifting FADs”, written by Patrice Brehmer, Gorka Sancho,Vasilis Trygonis, David Itano, ...John Dalen, Ariel Fuchs, Abdelmalek Faraj, and Marc Taquet.
Cephalopods are harvested in increasingly large quantities but understanding how to control and manage their stocks, and tracking the routes of the consumption that exploits them, lag behind what has ...been developed for exploiting finfish. This review attempts to redress the imbalance by considering the status of the major cephalopod stock species and the traceability of cephalopod seafood along the trade value chain. It begins with a general overview of the most important exploited cephalopods, their stock status and their market. Four major cephalopod resources are identified: the three squid species
Todarodes pacificus
,
Dosidicus gigas
and
Illex argentinus
; and one species of octopus,
Octopus vulgaris
. The techniques and problems of stock assessment (to assess sustainability) are reviewed briefly and the problems and possible solutions for assessing benthic stock such as those of octopuses are considered. An example of a stock well managed in the long term is presented to illustrate the value of careful monitoring and management: the squid
Doryteuthis gahi
available in Falkland Islands waters. Issues surrounding identification, mislabelling and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing are then reviewed, followed by a discussion of approaches and techniques of traceability as applied to cephalopods. Finally, some of the mobile apps currently available and in development for tracking seafood are compared. This review concludes with observations on the necessity for the strengthening and international coordination of legislation, and more rigorous standards for seafood labelling and for taxonomic curation of DNA sequences available in public databases for use in seafood identification.
Robert, M., Faraj, A., McAllister, M. K., and Rivot, E. 2010. Bayesian state-space modelling of the De Lury depletion model: strengths and limitations of the method, and application to the Moroccan ...octopus fishery. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 67: 1272–1290. The strengths and limitations of a Bayesian state-space modelling framework are investigated for a De Lury depletion model that accommodates two recruitment pulses per year. The framework was applied to the Moroccan fishery for common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) between 1982 and 2002. To allow identifiability, natural mortality (M) and the recruitment rhythm were fixed, and the variance of both process and observation errors were assumed to be equal. A simulation–estimation (SE) approach was derived to test the performance of the method. If the data showed responses to harvest, the estimates of the most important figures, i.e. the initial abundance and the second recruitment pulse, were accurate, with relatively small bias. Results confirm that greater depletion yields smaller bias and uncertainty and that inferences are sensitive to the mis-specification of M. The 21 depletion series in the Moroccan dataset were jointly treated in a hierarchical model including random walk to capture the systematic fluctuations in estimates of catchability and initial abundance. The model provides estimates of the annual recruitment and monthly octopus population size. The recruitment estimates could be used to investigate the link between recruitment variability and the coastal North African upwelling regime to improve understanding of the dynamics and management of octopus stocks.
Faraj, A., and Bez, N. 2007. Spatial considerations for the Dakhla stock of Octopus vulgaris: indicators, patterns, and fisheries interactions. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 64: 1820–1828. The ...common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is the target species of the cephalopod fishery that exploits two stocks, Dakhla and Cap Blanc, off southern Morocco (26°N 21°N), an area commonly referred to as the Saharan Bank. Octopus vulgaris is also one of the most abundant demersal species in this highly productive area, and plays a key role in the upwelling ecosystem. Spatial patterns of the main phases of the Octopus vulgaris life cycle of the Dakhla stock are described, using trawl surveys carried out twice a year from 1998 to 2003. Using geostatistics and spatial indicators, mature females and juveniles are analysed and mapped to characterize the main features of the spawning and recruitment phases. There are clear distinctions between the spatial patterns of the spawning and recruitment phases: juveniles are more coastal, less spatially dispersed, more anisotropically distributed, and more patchy. Our results suggest that the spatial pattern of the Octopus vulgaris Dakhla stock is different from that of the same species in other ecosystems such as the Mediterranean. GIS reveals that the spawning–stock biomass is globally more accessible to the industrial fleet than to the artisanal one, a finding contrary to contemporary thinking and with important resource management implications.
The Canary Current ecosystem is one of the four major eastern boundary upwelling systems of the world oceans. The Moroccan Atlantic continental shelf is part of the Canary Current ecosystem, and ...constitutes an area of high biological productivity and intensive fisheries activity. During the last five decades, catches and distribution of numerous species have undergone decadal changes. Huge fluctuations of abundance have been observed for sardines, sardinellas and other pelagic and bottom fishes. Time-series of catches show signs of replacement of long-lived bottom species by short-lived ones (small pelagics and cephalopods) in the commercial fisheries, as part of a heavy ecological footprint of exploitation in the ecosystem. Like most fisheries worldwide, Moroccan marine fisheries are presently managed following a mono-species approach. The research and stock assessment effort has mainly focused on the commercially targeted species. The mono-species approach has gradually revealed its limits, and more attention has to be given to the complex array of interactions in marine ecosystems, but the problems that this question raises to fisheries in the case of poor data availability are immense.
L'aménagement de la pêcherie céphalopodière au Maroc est principalement axé sur la régulation des captures du poulpe (Octopus vulgaris), l'espèce prioritaire. Son potentiel exploitable est déterminé ...sur la base des évaluations directes à travers des campagnes de prospection scientifiques. Il s'agit de (i) fournir un estimateur de bonne qualité – sans biais et précis – de l'abondance globale, accompagné de sa variance d'estimation et des cartes de distribution du stock, (ii) suivre la dynamique spatio-temporelle du poulpe dont la connaissance est indispensable pour la gestion. Pour y parvenir : - Les propriétés spatiales de la densité du poulpe sont décrites et les conditions de stationnarité sont analysées sur une série de données historique. - Des méthodes d'estimation globale – transitives et intrinsèques – sont appliquées en tenant compte des conditions particulières des données, notamment la non-stationnarité concernant l'approche probabiliste intrinsèque et l'échantillonnage non contrôlé concernant l'approche déterministe transitive. - La stratégie d'occupation de l'espace par le poulpe est décrite à l'aide d'indicateurs géostatistiques. Elle se caractérise par un schéma de reproduction étendu sur le plateau continental et un succès du recrutement essentiellement côtier. D'importantes implications en matière de gestion sont discutées. Pour finir, ce travail est replacé dans son contexte plus global de l'aménagement de la pêcherie céphalopodière, et de la nouvelle stratégie de la pêche. De nouvelles perspectives pour l'application des techniques géostatistiques et des statistiques spatiales sont envisagées pour les évaluations de stocks, en particulier du poulpe.
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