During the first two years of my project, I conducted research at the Graduate School of Oceanography in Rhode Island, United States, under the supervision of Dr. Jeremy Collie. In this phase, I successfully achieved my first objective: identifying that temperature and fishing activity are crucial factors influencing the abundance of bottom-living fish. These findings are consistent with existing theoretical knowledge on the effects of fishing and temperature on fish biomass, providing essential empirical evidence to support model-based predictions in the context of global change. While in the United States, I also began work on both the second and third objectives of my project.
Additionally, I undertook a two-month secondment under the supervision of Dr. Katell Hamon at Wageningen Economic Research in the Netherlands. During this period, I explored the social, political, and economic factors affecting fisheries catch. This project integrated expertise from ecologists, economists, and social scientists to develop scenarios depicting potential futures for fisheries. My research indicates that current fisheries catch is significantly influenced by socio-political factors, and there are marked differences in fisheries management approaches between the European Union and North America.
In the last year of the project, I conducted research at the Technical University of Denmark. Here, I finalized both the second and third objective of my project. Among others, I used reconstructed fishing exploitation rates to simulate catch trends of diverse ecosystems on a global scale. I found that fishing has reduced the biomass of big predators (large pelagic and demersal fish) by 25% in shelf regions. This decline led to less predation on forage fish and a 50% increase in forage fish biomass, despite fishing of forage fish. These simulations allow estimating the relative effects of climate change and fishing on current and future fish communities.
I directed the exploitation of my results towards the ecosystem-modelling community as well as towards fisheries management bodies. Exploitation of the novel fish community biomass estimates was done within the EU-funded project B-USEFUL. B-USEFUL aims to create user-oriented solutions for improved monitoring and management of biodiversity. Exploitation of my mathematical modelling developments was done within the EU-funded project NECCTON. NECCTON will enable the Copernicus Marine Service to better inform ocean policymakers, managers and publics about biodiversity conservation and fisheries management, by means of new modelling products for the ocean. In addition, I joined the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (Fish-MIP). Fish-MIP is a network of more than 100 marine ecosystem modellers and researchers from around the world. Lastly, I have been actively engaged in the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) where I have supported advisory products as well as presented my work in two working groups linked to EU fisheries management.
