L'état des communautés exploitées au large des côtes de France. Application d'indicateurs à l'évaluation de l'impact de la pêche. Bilan 2004 – Edition 2009

Since about twenty years, Ifremer have carried out fishery surveys along the French coasts. A dynamic indicator-based approach to the assessment of multi-stock fisheries has been applied to these data series. Reference points for non-commercial populations and community indicators are seldom available, but reference directions are well established: it is known whether fishing will increase or decrease the indicator, hence the direction that should be avoided. A set of simple indicators of fishing impacts on fish populations and communities were estimated from time-series data provided by scientific surveys (population abundance and average length, community total biomass and number, average length and weight, and size spectrum). Trends in these indicators were assessed within a hypothesis testing framework. The results of the assessments are presented in tables where trends are indicated to draw attention on the changes in the fish community. This report similar to previous synthesis (Bertrand 2004) has updated indicators with data until 2004.