Work Package 7: Collaborative Research Programmes If you have difficulties viewing PDF files please make sure you are using the latest version of the Adobe Reader.
Work Package 7: Collaborative Research Programmes
MariFish partners are now collaborating on planned or existing national research projects to achieve broader and more significant results. Partners identified the most important topics in marine fisheries management and selected five to be developed into collaborative research programmes by a group of interested countries. Four collaborative programmes are now running, with the fifth delayed due to organisation changes within the core group leader’s organisation. Two programmes focus on a particular region and three focus on a particular issue since this gives all partners a chance to participate. Some programmes aim to collaborate without providing any new research funding and some will use additional funding to strategically link the programmes together.
Maurice Heral, from IFREMER (France) is leading on this work package and also leading on a regional collaborative programme using the Channel as a case study for developing the ecosystem approach to management.
Regional Case Study – Developing the Ecosystem Approach in The Channel – led by IFREMER, France
This programme will develop the ecosystem approach to fisheries management, specifically investigating the spatial characteristics of the Channel. France, The Netherlands, Belgium and England & Wales (Defra) are full partners. Ireland, Spain, Greece and Norway are participating as Observers (interested in the development of the ecosystem approach but not the region). The collaborative programme will focus on habitat mapping and the effect of fishing on the ecosystem. Management actions such as modification of gear types will be assessed and socio-economic factors will be included in the programme.
A meeting will be held on 18th December in Bologne Sur Mer, France to develop the detailed plans for the programme and the minutes will be made available once they are finalised.
Regional Case Study – The Mediterranean – Fish Habitats and Trophic Interactions – led by GSRT, Greece
The Mediterranean region was identified as an area that would particularly benefit from collaboration under the MariFish project. Greece, France, Spain (and Cyprus acting as Observer) have agreed to focus on fish habitats and trophic interactions within the Mediterranean area. It is hoped that Croatia and Italy will join the programme at a later stage to achieve a greater coverage of the region.
An inventory of research programmes has been developed and the next step is to incorporate details from universities and other institutes. Partners have agreed to make data available in a restricted access database funded by DG MARE to give access to the GFCM working group. Data would be provided on request and then become freely available after 3 years.
Partners plan to work on the identification of essential habitats for large pelagic species to model seasonal spatial trends in blue fin tuna and swordfish abundance in the Mediterranean as functions of environmental spatial and temporal variables. Since this topic is relevant to the WP8 joint call there are plans to submit a proposal for consideration.
Another collaborative topic is to identify and map the essential fish habitat of small pelagics (anchovy and sardine) in the Mediterranean Sea, again with potential to submit a proposal to the WP8 call.
There are also plans to collaborate on two projects on demersal fisheries and trophic relationships (AMPED, France and IDEADOS, Spain) with Greece collaborating at a methodological level.
Thematic programme - Reducing discards – led by Defra, UK
14 of the 16 funding partners are now participating in this collaborative programme. This very high level of interest demonstrates how important the issue of discarding is to most European nations.
Gear technologists and discards experts met in Lyon at the end of October 2008, to agree on practical collaborative actions. With such a large group, a first action was to improve the management of information relating to discards, with details of the research projects to be held on the website and regularly kept up to date.
The expertise of a knowledge management consultant was used to explore new ways of working together and sharing knowledge. Scientists agreed to form expert groups on a number of topics, keeping in touch more regularly to share their progress.
Several collaborative agreements were reached during the meeting:
- Collaboration agreed between Operators (PDF, 66 KB)
- Minutes of the Discards meeting (PDF, 39 KB)
- Progress report on collaboration agreed between Operators at Lyon, 28-29th October, 2008 (PDF, 254 KB)
After the meeting the progress of the collaborative agreements will be monitored and communication between the participants will be facilitated by the MariFish secretariat, to assist and build on the existing agreements.
The 2nd Meeting of the MariFish Bycatch and Discards Scientific Committee was held in Madrid on the 5th to the 6th October 2009.
- The importance of tackling discards - a fishery managers view - MARM (PowerPoint, 66 KB)
- The importance of tackling discards - a fishery managers view - Defra (Powerpoint, 1.38 MB)
- Purse seine - Institute of Marine Research Norway (PowerPoint, 3.65 MB)
- MariFish strengths weaknesses and opportunities (PowerPoint, 196 KB)
- Badminton-Hellenic Centre for Marine research (PowerPoint, 235 KB)
- Activities IEO Discard Bycatch Team throughout 2009 (PowerPoint, 941 KB)
Thematic programme - Influence of climate on small pelagic fish biology, distribution and population dynamics– led by IEO (MICINN), Spain
The impact of climate change on herring, sprat, sardine and anchovy will be investigated under this collaborative programme. A meeting of fishery managers and scientists was held in Madrid on 19-20th November to develop plans and the scientists will meet again on 9-10th January in Spain to develop the programme in detail. It is hoped that some additional funding will be secured with potential for the joint call for research to fund some research that could be included within the collaborative programme.
At the meeting it was agreed that the general goal was to gain understanding of how climate variability is affecting small pelagic fish.
The general objectives were:
- Analyze changes in the biology, life cycles and distribution of the main small pelagic fish species (BIOLOGY).
- Analyze changes in the pelagic ecosystem (ECOLOGY).
- Simulate potential variability of the pelagic community under different scenarios of combined fishing pressure and climate variability (MODELLING).
- Identify options for management of small pelagic fish communities taking into account their ecosystems given different climate scenarios (MANAGEMENT).
The potential candidate research themes were:
- Habitat modeling, spatio-t emporal patterns.
- Life history.
- Stock structure.
- Recruitment processes and drivers.
- Ecological and trophic interactions.
- Conceptual models of the pelagic ecosystem inter alia in support of management
- Variability in ecosystem carrying capacity and energy transfer.
- Coupling the required components to produce end-to-end pelagic ecosystem models; Hydrodynamic, lower trophic levels, pelagic fish community, top predators, and fishers.
- Linking the above in a management context.
The candidate key species and areas already identified were:
- Species: sardine, herring, anchovy, sprat.
- Areas: Northeast Atlantic, Baltic Sea, Celtic Sea, North Sea, English Channel, Bay of Biscay, Atlantic Iberian peninsula, North Aegean Sea, Western Mediterranean.