SUMMARY

• Main Authors: C. Ravier, J. M. Fromentin
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.563.3859; http://www.iccat.int/Documents/CVSP/CV054_2002/no_2/CV054020507.pdf

More than one hundred long-term time-series of bluefin tuna catches from the ancestral Mediterranean and Atlantic trap fisheries are used to (1) estimate historical range of BFT yields in the Mediterranean and adjacent Atlantic and (2) investigate spatial and temporal patterns of fluctuations in trap catches. Mean historical catches were around 110 000 tunas/year ( ± 50 000), i.e. 15 000 tons/year (∈[7 000;25 000]). Fluctuations in trap catches are of large magnitude, periods of high abundance being up to seven times higher than those of low abundance. More interesting was the occurrence of 100-year-long periodic fluctuations as well as 20-year cycles. These medium- to long-term fluctuations, representing more than 50 % of the total variability in the time-series, were synchronous all around the western Mediterranean and adjacent North Atlantic. In contrast, short-term variability was only synchronous at a local scale. It is argued that long-term fluctuations in trap catches could be considered as a proxy of those in abundance, and a synthetic time-series has been computed to depict them. Biological and ecological processes that could cause such long-term fluctuations as well as implication of such fluctuations in term of fisheries management are discussed. RÉSUMÉ