Spatio-temporal patterns and environmental controls of small pelagic fish body condition from contrasted Mediterranean areas

Download

Date

2017-02-01

Author

Brosset, Pablo
Fromentin, Jean-Marc
Van Beveren, Elisabeth
Lloret, Josep
Marques, Virginie
Basilone, Gualtiero
Bonanno, Angelo
Carpi, Piera
Donato, Fortunata
Kec, Vanja Cikes
De Felice, Andrea
Ferreri, Rosalia
Gasparevic, Denis
Giraldez, Ana
Gücü, Ali Cemal
Iglesias, Magdalena
Leonori, Iole
Palomera, Isabel
Somarakis, Stylianos
Ticina, Vjekoslav
Torres, Pedro
Ventero, Ana
Zorica, Barbara
Menard, Frederic
Saraux, Claire

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

231
views

0
downloads

Small pelagic fish are among the most ecologically and economically important marine fish species and are characterized by large fluctuations all over the world. In the Mediterranean Sea, low catches and biomass of anchovies and sardines have been described in some areas during the last decade, resulting in important fisheries crises. Therefore, we studied anchovy and sardine body condition variability, a key index of population health and its response to environmental and anthropogenic changes. Wide temporal and spatial patterns were investigated by analyzing separately data from scientific surveys and fisheries in eight Mediterranean areas between 1975 and 2015. Results showed that anchovy and sardine body condition as well as maximum size in some areas sharply decreased in most Mediterranean areas along years (except in the Northern Alboran Sea). Despite this general pattern, well-marked environmental differences between sub-regions were highlighted by several analyses and variations in body condition were not found to be homogeneous over all the Mediterranean Sea. Further, other analyses revealed that except for the Adriatic where major changes towards a lower body condition were concomitant with a decrease in river runoffs and chl-a concentration, no concomitant environmental regime shift was detected in other areas. Together, these analyses highlighted the current poor body condition of almost all small pelagic fish populations in the Mediterranean. Yet, global environmental indices could not explain the observed changes and the general decrease in condition might more likely come from regional environmental and/or anthropogenic (fishing) effects. A prolonged state of poor fish body condition, together with an observed reduced size and early age-at-maturity may have strong ecological, economic and social consequences all around the Mediterranean Sea.

Subject Keywords

Anchovy, Sardine, Fish health, Marine monitoring

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/31796

Journal

PROGRESS IN OCEANOGRAPHY

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2016.12.002

Collections

Graduate School of Marine Sciences, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Stock assessment of the Black Sea anchovy Tutar, Özge; Gücü, Ali Cemal; Department of Marine Biology and Fisheries (2014) The Black Sea anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) is economically the most important fish species in Turkey since it provides 60% of the total fish catch. The Turkish fleet catches 90% of the anchovy stock in the Black Sea due to the anchovy winter migration to the Turkish coast. Over the last 50 years, the Black Sea basin has been subjected to pollution due to human sourced nutrient accumulation in the NW basin via the rivers Danube, Dniester and Dnieper and transportation. The ecosystem has been destroyed by...
Current distribution of the small pelagic fish populations in the North Eastern Levantine Sea in relation to environmental conditions and predicting the impacts of temperature rise on their future distributions Sakınan, Serdar; Gücü, Ali Cemal; Department of Marine Biology and Fisheries (2014) Stocks of traditionally targeted fish species are in decline in the north eastern Levant Sea due to overfishing during recent decades, while catch statistics show a simultaneous increase in landings of commercially less valuable small pelagic species. Moreover, the number of species in the eastern Mediterranean is increasing due to Lessepsian migration and the response of native species to the continuous migration of lessepsian species is in question. Additionally, warming associated with climate change is ...
Sediments, not plants, offer the preferred refuge for Daphnia against fish predation in Mediterranean shallow lakes: an experimental demonstration Tavsanoglu, Ulku Nihan; Cakiroglu, Ayse Idil; Erdogan, Seyda; Meerhoff, Mariana; Jeppesen, Erik; Beklioğlu, Meryem (2012-04-01) 1. Different behavioural responses of planktonic animals to their main predators, fish, have been reported from shallow lakes. In north temperate lakes, large-bodied zooplankton may seek refuge from predation among macrophytes, whereas in subtropical lakes, avoidance of macrophytes has been observed. The prevalent behaviour probably depends on the characteristics of the fish community, which in Mediterranean lakes is typically dispersed in both the open water zone and in the littoral, as in temperate lakes,...
Energy-based top-down and bottom-up relationships between fish community energy demand or production and phytoplankton across lakes at a continental scale Bartrons, Mireia; Mehner, Thomas; Argillier, Christine; Beklioğlu, Meryem; Blabolil, Petr; Hesthagen, Trygve; Sweden, Kerstin Holmgren; Jeppesen, Erik; Krause, Teet; Podgornik, Samo; Volta, Pietro; Winfield, Ian J.; Brucet, Sandra (Wiley, 2020-04-01) Fish community feeding and production rates may differ between lakes despite similar fish biomass levels because of differences in size structure and local temperature. Therefore, across-lake comparisons of the strength and direction of top-down and bottom-up fish-phytoplankton relationships should consider these factors. We used the metabolic theory of ecology to calculate size- and temperature-corrected community energy demand (CEDom) and community production (CP) of omnivorous fishes in 227 European lake...
Optimization of growth characteristics for the potential probiotics to be used in fish aquaculturing Aytekin, Nihal Destan; Hamamcı, Haluk; Büyükkileci, Ali Oğuz; Department of Food Engineering (2013) The aquaculturing of marine and fresh water fish is continually increasing in the world and in Turkey. Of the three fish species; sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), seabream (Sparus aurata) and trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), the latter has the highest share in Turkey, with a current production rate of 170000 tons per annum. The use of antibiotics in true feed is being phased out in the world. Probiotics have emerged one way of making up for the lack of antibiotics in the feed. In order to increase the probiotic...

Citation Formats

P. Brosset et al., “Spatio-temporal patterns and environmental controls of small pelagic fish body condition from contrasted Mediterranean areas,” PROGRESS IN OCEANOGRAPHY, pp. 149–162, 2017, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/31796.