Trawling disturbance on benthic ecosystems and consequences on commercial species: A northwestern Mediterranean case study

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Muntadas, Alba
Demestre, Montserrat
de Juan, Silvia
Frid, Chris LJ
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2014
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Abstract

Trawling is known to disturb benthic communities and habitats, which may in turn indirectly affect populations of commercial species that live in close association with the seabed. The degree of impact on both benthic communities and demersal species depends on the fishing effort level. This may vary over the year because of the fleet dynamics, which are in turn normally driven by the main target species’ life cycle. In this study we describe changes in benthic functional components of a northwestern Mediterranean fishing ground that represents a recruitment area for an important target species (red mullet, Mullus barbatus). This fishing ground experiences a varying intensity of fishing effort over the year and benthic functional components under different levels of trawling were compared with an unfished, control area. Traits related to sexual maturity and life span for infauna and body size and life span for epifauna were found to vary with fishing activity. Potential effects of these changes on ecological functioning and the impact on red mullet population are discussed. The development of fisheries management plans under an ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM) requires the links between target species and benthic communities’ disturbance due to fishing practices to be explicitly considered.

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Scientia Marina: international journal on marine sciences

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78

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S1

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© 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial Lisence (by-nc) Spain 3.0 which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.

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Earth sciences

Oceanography not elsewhere classified

Environmental sciences

Agricultural, veterinary and food sciences

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