Competition for the Resource: Management Issues in French Mediterranean Fisheries

Suggested Bibliographic Reference: Challenging New Frontiers in the Global Seafood Sector: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, July 11-15, 2016. Compiled by Stefani J. Evers and Ann L. Shriver. International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET), Corvallis, 2016.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.In multi-species fisheries, technical and social interactions between different components of the fisheries can make it difficult to maximize economic yield. Furthermore, the different fish stocks contributing to the overall catch may present different levels of natural variability leading to difficulties in determining optimal management strategies. Bio-economic performances of multi-species fisheries being subject to high levels of biological and economic uncertainty, successful fisheries management should identify and cope with risk when assessing management strategies. In this paper, bio-socio-economic performances of various management strategies under uncertainty are studied based on the French fisheries in the Gulf of Lion in the Mediterranean Sea. These multi-species and multi-gear fisheries is divided here into three main components, one including demersal trawlers exploiting especially hake (Merluccius merluccius), one including pelagic trawlers used to be directed to the catch of small pelagic species (mainly anchovy Engraulis encrasicholus and sardine Sardina pilchardus) and recently reallocating effort on demersal species due to anchovy and sardine collapse and the other component consisting of small-scale fisheries. A multi-species, multi-gear bio-economic and stochastic model (Impact Assessment model for fisheries management, IAM) is used to explore the bio-socio-economic performances of the three different components of the fishery. Different management strategies are tested and compared in the context of change in fishing strategy of pelagic trawlers. Taking into account the interactions between pelagic and demersal trawlers on the one hand and trawlers and small-scale fisheries on the other hand, the trade-offs between biological and socio-economic indicators are quantified for the different management strategies