Latest fisheries directives propose adopting an ecosystem approach to manage fisheries \citep{FAO-EAFM}. Such an approach aims to protect important ecosystems based on the principle that healthy ecosystems produce more and thus enhance sustainability. Unfortunately, quantifying the importance of an ecosystem is a difficult task to do due the immense number of interactions involved in marine systems.
This PhD dissertation relies on the fact that good fisheries distribution maps could play a very important role as they allow a visual and intuitive assessment of different marine areas. Unfortunately, the limited amount of data available and the inherent difficulties of modelling fishery data has resulted in relatively low quality maps in the near past (see \citep{atlas} and \url{http://www.ices.dk/marine-data/maps/Pages/ICES-FishMap.aspx)}. As a result, the spatial fisheries management framework requires competent statistical approaches to quantify the importance of different marine areas with an appropriate measure of uncertainty associated to the estimates.
The aim of this PhD is to provide competent spatial and spatio-temporal modelling approaches that allow us characterise different fishery processes that are relevant for their sustainable management
