Gulf of Lions - Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries

Fisheries regulations within French territorial waters (12 nautical miles from teh coast) concern effort control: the number of fishing license, the type and the size of boats and fishing gears; and a minimum landing size and quotas for Atlantic bluefin tuna. There are also spatial and temporal restrictions on fishing, including some small areas inside coastal marine protected areas such as Côte Bleue and Banyuls-Cerbère, which proved to be efficient marine environmental and fisheries management tools.

Demersal trawlers fish over the continental shelf depths of 200m. For vessels operating outside French territorial waters, the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) implemented the use of the 40 mm square mesh in 2009. In addition, in 2009 GFCM created a High Sea Fishery Restricted Area (FRA) in a highly productive area of the Gulf of Lions to protect the spawners of the main commercial species, to protect habitats and maintain the food webs on the slope area of the Gulf of Lions seawards Rhone River. Here, fishing effort by demersal and pelagic trawlers, gillnetters and longliners in this area is frozen at the level it was in 2008.

Science in support of an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries includes the collection of data and data management by IFREMER (Fisheries Information System of French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea). In particular IFREMER conducts regular aerial, acoustic and bottom trawl surveys of the Gulf of Lions: “Pelagique Méditerranée” (PELMED) and “International bottom trawl survey in the Mediterranean” (MEDITS) have estimated biomass and indices of biomass by species in the Gulf of Lions since 1993. These data, complemented by additional data, are used to develop ecosystem models focused on food webs and fisheries management for the Gulf of Lions. One example is the development of an end-to-end modelling project that couples physical models to higher trophic level models. These models can be used to explore theoretical scenarios of climate change and fisheries management and contribute to the future management, in an ecosystem context, of marine resources in the area.