Morgane Travers-Trolet

Combined fishing and climate forcing in the southern Benguela upwelling ecosystem: an end-to-end modelling approach reveals dampened effects

The effects of climate and fishing on marine ecosystems have usually been studied separately, but their interactions make ecosystem dynamics difficult to understand and predict. Of particular interest to management, the potential synergism or antagonism between fishing pressure and climate forcing is analysed in this paper, using an end-to-end ecosystem model of the southern Benguela ecosystem, built from coupling hydrodynamic, biogeochemical and multispecies fish models (ROMS-N2P2Z2D2-OSMOSE). Scenarios of different intensities of upwelling-favourable wind stress combined with scenarios of fishing top-predator fish were tested. Analyses of isolated drivers show that the bottom-up effect of the climate forcing propagates up the food chain whereas the top-down effect of fishing cascades down to zooplankton in unfavourable environmental conditions but dampens before it reaches phytoplankton. When considering both climate and fishing drivers together, it appears that top-down control dominates the link between top-predator fish and forage fish, whereas interactions between the lower trophic levels are dominated by bottom-up control. The forage fish functional group appears to be a central component of this ecosystem, being the meeting point of two opposite trophic controls. The set of combined scenarios shows that fishing pressure and upwelling-favourable wind stress have mostly dampened effects on fish populations, compared to predictions from the separate effects of the stressors. Dampened effects result in biomass accumulation at the top predator fish level but a depletion of biomass at the forage fish level. This should draw our attention to the evolution of this functional group, which appears as both structurally important in the trophic functioning of the ecosystem, and very sensitive to climate and fishing pressures. In particular, diagnoses considering fishing pressure only might be more optimistic than those that consider combined effects of fishing and environmental variability.

Regime Shift in an Exploited Fish Community Related to Natural Climate Oscillations.

Identifying the various drivers of marine ecosystem regime shifts and disentangling their respective influence are critical tasks for understanding biodiversity dynamics and properly managing exploited living resources such as marine fish communities. Unfortunately, the mechanisms and forcing factors underlying regime shifts in marine fish communities are still largely unknown although climate forcing and anthropogenic pressures such as fishing have been suggested as key determinants. Based on a 24-year-long time-series of scientific surveys monitoring 55 fish and cephalopods species, we report here a rapid and persistent structural change in the exploited fish community of the eastern English Channel from strong to moderate dominance of small-bodied forage fish species with low temperature preferendum that occurred in the mid-1990s. This shift was related to a concomitant warming of the North Atlantic Ocean as attested by a switch of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation from a cold to a warm phase. Interestingly, observed changes in the fish community structure were opposite to those classically induced by exploitation as larger fish species of higher trophic level increased in abundance. Despite not playing a direct role in the regime shift, fishing still appeared as a forcing factor affecting community structure. Moreover, although related to climate, the regime shift may have been facilitated by strong historic exploitation that certainly primed the system by favoring the large dominance of small-bodied fish species that are particularly sensitive to climatic variations. These results emphasize that particular attention should be paid to multidecadal natural climate variability and its interactions with both fishing and climate warming when aiming at sustainable exploitation and ecosystem conservation.

Understanding winter distribution and transport pathways of the invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in the North Sea: coupling habitat and dispersal modelling approaches.

The invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi has been reported in various coastal locations in the southern North Sea in the past years. Since 2009, International Bottom Trawl Surveys have recorded this species each winter in open waters. As this species, well-known for its dramatic disturbance of ecosystems, was expected not to be able to overwinter offshore it is crucial to understand its distribution dynamics. Two modelling methods, a quantile regression and a particle tracking model, were used (1) to identify habitats where the invasive ctenophore M. leidyi could survive the North Sea cold winters and (2) to investigate the dispersal of individuals between these different habitats, emphasizing favorable areas where sustainable populations could have been established. Temperature was found to be the crucial factor controlling the winter distribution of M. leidyi in the North Sea. High abundance predictions in winter were associated with low values of temperature, which characterise south-eastern coastal areas and estuaries influenced by riverine runoff. A retention-based M. leidyi population was indicated along the northern Dutch coast and German Bight and a transport-based population offshore from the western Danish coast. Individuals found in the open waters were transported from southern coasts of the North Sea, thus the open water population densities depend on the flux of offspring from these areas. This study provides the first estimates of the overwinter areas of this invasive species over the cold winters in the North Sea. Based on the agreement of habitat and dispersal model results, we conclude that M. leidyi has become established along south-eastern coasts of the North Sea where the environment conditions allows overwintering and it can be retained for later blooms.

Inferring the annual, seasonal, and spatial distributions of marine species from complementary research and commercial vessels’ catch rates

The objective of this study is to analyse at fine scale the annual, seasonal and spatial distributions of several species in the Eastern English Channel (EEC). On the one hand, data obtained from scientific surveys are not available all year through, but are considered to provide consistent yearly and spatially resolved abundance indices. On the other hand, on-board commercial data do cover the whole year, but generally provide a biased perception of stock abundance. The combination of scientific and commercial catches per unit of effort (CPUEs), standardized using a delta-generalized linear model, allowed to infer spatial and monthly dynamics of fish distributions in the EEC, which could be compared with previous knowledge on their life cycles. Considering the scientific survey as a repository, the degree of reliability of commercial CPUEs was assessed with survey-based distribution using the Local Index of Collocation. Large scale information was in agreement with literature, especially for cuttlefish. Fine scale consistency between survey and commercial data was significant for half of the 19 tested species (e.g. whiting, cod). For the other species (e.g. plaice, thornback ray), the results were inconclusive, mainly owing to poor commercial data coverage and/or to particular aspects of the species biology.

Evidence of a relationship between weight and total length of marine fish in the North-eastern Atlantic Ocean: physiological, spatial and temporal variations

Weight–Body Length relationships (WLR) of 45 fish species (37 Actinopterygii and eight Elasmobranchii) were investigated. A total of 31,167 individuals were caught and their biological parameters measured during the four quarters from 2013 to 2015, on five scientific surveys sampling the North-eastern Atlantic Ocean from the North Sea to the Bay of Biscay (ICES Divisions IVb, IVc, VIId, VIIe, VIIg, VIIh, VIIj, VIIIa and VIIIb). Among 45 tested species, all showed a significant correlation between total length (L) and total weight (W). The influence of sex on WLR was estimated for 39 species and presented a significant sexual dimorphism for 18 species. Condition factor (K) of females was always higher than for males. Moreover, a spatial effect on the WLR according to five ecoregions (the Bay of Biscay, the Celtic Sea, the Western English Channel, the Eastern English Channel and the North Sea), was significant for 18 species among 38 tested species. The temporal effect was tested according to components (year and quarter/season). The seasonality effect on WLR is more frequently significant than the year especially for the Elasmobranchii species, and can be related to the spawning season. Finally, depressiform species (skates, sharks and flatfish) are characterized by positive allometric growth, whereas there is no such clear pattern regarding roundfishes growth, whatever their body shape is.

From Data to End-to-End Models: 15 Years of Research to Describe the Dynamics of Exploited Marine Ecosystems in the Eastern Channel

Considerable research has been conducted in the past 15 years around the Eastern English Channel ecosystem. Data collected since the 1970s on the biotic and abiotic compartments have been collated and mapped out in the mid-2000. This spatially explicit information formed a sound basis to improve knowledge on, and model, the functioning and dynamics of key ecosystem compartments, with a focus on flatfish species and fisheries and their interactions with other sectors of activity (aggregate extractions, maritime traffic). The more recent ongoing works are dedicated to the integration of those processes into several complementary end-to-end ecosystem models.