The Major Roles of Climate Warming and Ecological Competition in the Small-scale Coastal Fishery in French Guiana

Abstract

Marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and fisheries are under strain worldwide due to global changes including climate warming and demographic pressure. To address this issue, many scientists and stakeholders advocate the use of an ecosystem approach for fisheries that integrates the numerous ecological and economic complexities at play rather than focusing on the management of individual target species. However, the operationalization of such an ecosystem approach remains challenging, especially from a bio-economic standpoint. Here, to address this issue, we propose a model of intermediate complexity (MICE) relying on multi-species, multi-fleet, and resource-based dynamics. Climate change effects are incorporated through an envelope model for the biological growth of fish species as a function of sea surface temperature. The model is calibrated for the small-scale fishery in French Guiana using a time series of fish landings and fishing effort from 2006 to 2018. From the calibrated model, a predictive fishing effort projection and RCP climate scenarios derived from IPCC, we explore the ecosystem dynamics and the fishery production at the horizon 2100. Our results demonstrate the long-term detrimental impact of both climate change and ecological competition on fish biodiversity. The prognosis is particularly catastrophic under the most pessimistic climate scenario, with a potential collapse of both biomass targeted species and fishing activity by 2100.

Ecosystem Services Assessment for the Conservation of Mangroves in French Guiana Using Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping

“…These numbers do not include illegal and subsistence fishing that could represent around 60% of total catches (Levrel, 2012). Mangrove conservation is thus critical for the sustainability of fishing practices, especially in the context of climate change that could lead to a collapse of both biomass of targeted species and fishing activities (Gomes et al, 2021). Meanwhile, fishing was reported by managers and scientists as an extraction activity that puts pressure on the natural environment.…”

Stochastic Multi-species MSY to Achieve Ecological-Economic Sustainability of a Coral Reef Fishery System in French Polynesia

“…The model we developed in this paper is in line with Models of Intermediate Complexity (MICE) advocated in [9,37,42] to deal with ecosystem-based fishery management. Indeed, this model is question-driven, and aims to limit complexity by restricting the focus on the minimum components and interactions needed to address the main effects of the management question under consideration.…”

“…Diop et al [34] and Lagarde et al [35] highlight the bioeconomic benefits of fishing strategies accounting for climate change. In that respect, the case of tropical fisheries is especially challenging, since a decrease of diversity is projected with climate warming [33,36,37].…”

“…Several studies have emphasised the difficulty to model such complex social-ecological systems, notably when also seeking to account for the effects of global change's effects [40,41]. Our research proposes an intermediate complexity approach [37,42] to the modelling of the Moorea social-ecological reef fishery system, allowing to estimate and compare fishing management strategies in ecological-economic terms in a context of environmental shocks. A dynamic, spatially explicit, multispecies, multi-fleet fishery model is developed and calibrated using ecological, economic and environmental data collected in Moorea.…”

From Fork to Fish: The Role of Consumer Preferences on the Sustainability of Fisheries

“…Aarssen (1983) state that two essential conditions must operate for the exclusion principle to take place: "(1) Their resource requirements must overlap beyond a certain critical point; and (2) one of them must be a superior competitor for these common resource requirement". This resource-based species competition is used and recommended to implement the economic management of an ecosystem in (Brock and Xepapadeas, 2002;De Lara and Doyen, 2008;Bøhn et al, 2008;Béné and Doyen, 2008;Gomes et al, 2021).…”