Marine reserve benefits and recreational fishing yields: The winners and the losers.

Marine reserves constitute effective tools for preserving fish stocks and associated human benefits. However, not all reserves perform equally, and predicting the response of marine communities to management actions in the long run is challenging. Our decadal-scale survey of recreational fishing yields at France's 45-year old Cerbère-Banyuls marine reserve indicated significant protection benefits, with 40-50% higher fishing yields per unit effort in the partial-protection zone of the reserve (where fishing is permitted but at a lower level) than in surrounding non-reserve areas.

Spatial distribution of juvenile fish along an artificialized seascape, insights from common coastal species in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea.

Along the littoral, a growing number of anthropogenic structures have caused substantial habitat destruction. Despite their detrimental impact, these constructions could play a role in the functioning of coastal ecosystems. The objective of this work was to assess the distribution of juvenile coastal fish along a seascape composed of various natural and artificial habitats in order to determine the potential role of coastal infrastructures as juvenile habitat.

Shallow rocky nursery habitat for fish: Spatial variability of juvenile fishes among this poorly protected essential habitat.

Coastal nursery habitats are essential for the renewal of adult fish populations. We quantified the availability of a coastal nursery habitat (shallow heterogeneous rocky bottoms) and the spatial variability of its juvenile fish populations along 250km of the Catalan coastline (France and Spain). Nurseries were present in 27% of the coastline, but only 2% of them benefited from strict protection status.

Contrasting fish behavior in artificial seascapes with implications for resources conservation.

Artificial reefs are used by many fisheries managers as a tool to mitigate the impact of fisheries on coastal fish communities by providing new habitat for many exploited fish species. However, the comparison between the behavior of wild fish inhabiting either natural or artificial habitats has received less attention. Thus the spatio-temporal patterns of fish that establish their home range in one habitat or the other and their consequences of intra-population differentiation on life-history remain largely unexplored.

Spatial assessment of fishing effort around European marine reserves: implications for successful fisheries management.

We examined the spatial dynamic of artisanal fishing fleets around five European marine protected areas (MPAs) to derive general implications for the evaluation of MPAs as fisheries management tools. The coastal MPAs studied were located off France, Malta and Spain and presented a variety of spatial designs and processes of establishment. We developed a standardized methodology to define factors influencing effort allocation and to produce fishing effort maps by merging GIS with geostatistical modelling techniques.