What Is Behind Fleet Evolution: Application of A Flow Analysis to the French Fisheries

If the study of the fisheries dynamics increasingly seeks to take into account the evolution of fishing fleets, the main mechanisms which govern their evolution at the local, national or international levels, are often not studied at all, or only partially studied. This applies in particular to vessel entry and exit or fleet transfers between fisheries and/or regions through second-hand vessel markets. These vessels movements also linked to owners flows, with owners of the invested capital deciding to stay or to leave a particular fishery or region. The aim of this paper is to identify what the key processes in the evolution of a fleet are by characterizing both the movements (flows) of vessels and owners. A typology of the flows of both vessels and owners is drawn based on entry, exit and vessel trade on the second-hand market. The approach is applied to the case of the French fishing fleet. The following flow analysis identifies structural elements of the fleet dynamics and for various scales of analysis. The approach also attempts to link the evolution of fleet structure to fisheries management, particularly in relation to the provision of economic incentives (subsidies to vessels building, scrapping) and fishing rights allocation mechanisms. Finally, the prospects for applying this approach across Europe are discussed.Keywords: Fish and Aquaculture Sectors Development, Fishing Capacity and Buyback Programs, Fisheries EconomicsKeywords: Fish and Aquaculture Sectors Development, Fishing Capacity and Buyback Programs, Fisheries Economic

An integrated and statistical approach for the valuation of economic status of small scale fisheries

The small scale fisheries are generally unknown over the world due to a crucial lack of data, and particularly costs and earnings data. This is also true for the European fisheries while vessels less than 12 meters represent almost 75% of the total European fleet. Faced to the increasing price of fuel and the depletion of traditional exploiting marine resources, fisheries managers need to know more about the small scale fleet, also in terms of its diversity. This paper first presents an integrated methodology, combining both biological and economic disciplines, used to collect data on small scale fisheries through questionnaires. The first set of collected data is used to produce a revenue model to assess individual earnings depending on technical characteristics and the fishing activity of the vessel. This revenue model allows then to assess the production of small scale fisheries per group of vessels. This revenue model is used in parallel to optimize the following sampling plans for collection of costs and earnings data. Implemented for 6 years in France, this system makes possible the assessment of total and per fleet gross value added and direct employment in the small scale fisheries. The results are presented in this paper and show the significant role of small scale fisheries in the French fishing sector

Representation of precipitation and top-of-atmosphere radiation in a multi-model convection-permitting ensemble for the Lake Victoria Basin (East-Africa)

The CORDEX Flagship Pilot Study ELVIC (climate Extremes in the Lake VICtoria basin) was recently established to investigate how extreme weather events will evolve in this region of the world and to provide improved information for the climate impact community. Here we assess the added value of the convection-permitting scale simulations on the representation of moist convective systems over and around Lake Victoria. With this aim, 10 year present-day model simulations were carried out with five regional climate models at both PARameterized (PAR) scales (12–25 km) and Convection-Permitting (CP) scales (2.5–4.5 km), with COSMO-CLM, RegCM, AROME, WRF and UKMO. Most substantial systematic improvements were found in metrics related to deep convection. For example, the timing of the daily maximum in precipitation is systematically delayed in CP compared to PAR models, thereby improving the agreement with observations. The large overestimation in the total number of rainy events is alleviated in the CP models. Systematic improvements were found in the diurnal cycle in Top-Of-Atmosphere (TOA) radiation and in some metrics for precipitation intensity. No unanimous improvement nor deterioration was found in the representation of the spatial distribution of total rainfall and the seasonal cycle when going to the CP scale. Furthermore, some substantial biases in TOA upward radiative fluxes remain. Generally our analysis indicates that the representation of the convective systems is strongly improved in CP compared to PAR models, giving confidence that the models are valuable tools for studying how extreme precipitation events may evolve in the future in the Lake Victoria basin and its surroundings

Evaluation of operational ocean forecasting systems from the perspective of the users and the experts

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) has an Ocean Decade Implementation Plan (UNESCO-IOC, 2021) that states seven outcomes required for the ocean we want, with the fourth outcome being “A predicted ocean where society understands and can respond to changing ocean conditions.” To facilitate the achievement of this goal, the IOC has endorsed Mercator Ocean International to implement the Decade Collaborative Center (DCC) for OceanPrediction (https://www.mercator-ocean.eu/oceanprediction/, last access: 21 August 2023), which is a cross-cutting structure that will work to develop global-scale collaboration between Decade Actions related to ocean prediction

ORFISH - Development of innovative, low-impact offshore fishing practices for small-scale vessels in outermost regions - MARE/2015/06. WP2. Raising awareness of the opportunities to develop innovative fishing techniques

This deliverable relates to the interactive tool mapping the evolution of the EU outermost fleets, which is available on the ORFISH website (http://orfish.eu). The Fleet Map has been built on the basis of the Data Collection Framework.