Bay of Biscay

Fishing has a long history on the eastern shelf of the Bay of Biscay. The numerous small-scale fleets have been industrialized over the last three decades. Although the number of fishing vessels concurrently decreased, this was not accompanied by a decrease in fishing pressure owing to technical progress and increase in fishing power. Consequently, many stocks have been consistently assessed as impacted by exploitation, and no change can be seen in the IndiSeas indicators. Because the ecosystem includes nurseries for several important stocks, fish are small, they feed at a low trophic level and the proportion of predatory fish is low. Thus the relatively low level of the indicators in the pie diagram should not be interpreted as a higher impact of fishing compared to other ecosystems.