From provisioning to cultural ecosystem services: the case of recreational fishing in marine social-ecological systems

Most of the time people perceive an ecosystem from the services it supplies. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment classifies them as provisioning, cultural, regulation and supporting services. One current global change, at least in the developed countries, is the shift from provisioning to cultural services in marine socio-ecological systems. While for centuries marine areas were mainly exploited for food services (fisheries), nowadays they are increasingly used for recreational services. Consequences of this global change are complex: firstly the services are now mainly related to the tertiary sector and not to the primary one; secondly there is potential competition between provisioning and cultural services; thirdly the costs and the benefits of these changes are not equitably distributed between non resident and local inhabitants; finally conflicts between people using these services are more and more important (especially between recreational and commercial fishers). In this communication, we question some of these changes from the example of recreational fishing in France, using a new national database and the Millennium Assessment logical framework. In particular, we analyse the main pressures on the fish biodiversity coming from this activity, the main behavioural driving forces to explain them and how the additional well-being derived from recreational activities can be assessed