Les peches maritimes : complexes biogeographiques de production et provinces halieutiques

The first part describes the evolution of the world sea fisheries from 1950 to 1977 and their present state : a decline of the growing rate of the catches, their biological structure and their distribution in the oceans according to the depth, the distance from the continent and the latitude. Then the biogeographical fishery complexes are defined, being characterized by assemblages of commercially valuable and actually caught species. These complexes are arranged according to the latitude with sometimes longitudinal subdivisions. At last with technical and economical criteria, such as the yield of the fisheries, the finality of the catches and the conditions of the exploitation which add themselves to the biogeographical complexes, the authors attempt to single out geographical fishing provinces.