Acronym RECNOR
Category
Fisheries
Title Recruitment study on North Sea fish stocks Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Geir Ottersen Coordinator email geir.ottersen@ibv.uio.no
Coordinator institution
IMR - Institute of Marine Research (Norway)
Institutions involved
IMR - Institute of Marine Research (Norway) ,
RIVO - Netherlands Institute for Fisheries Research (Netherlands) ,
OSU - Oregon State University (United States of America) ,
RCN - Research Council of Norway (Norway) ,
SAHFOS - Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (United Kingdom) ,
Start year 2007 End year 2010 Funding (€) € 896,306 Website NA Summary Recruitment to several of the ecologically and commercially important fish stocks in the North Sea has declined greatly in recent years, causing concern for fishers, managers and scientists alike. Herring, cod, haddock, sandeel, and Norway pout all have declined recruitment. We propose an applied and multidisciplinary study to explain the recent series of poor recruitment to these five target stocks and enhance the understanding of the mechanisms underlying it. Our study is novel for several reasons: (1) The species considered span completely different life histories, different niches in the ecosystem, different horizontal and vertical distributions and are exploited by different fishing fleets. Such a cross species study has never been tried in the North Sea before and seldom elsewhere; (2) This proposal takes a broad integrated approach - understanding that processes working on the individual fish occur in a space and time that either does or does not overlap with prey, predators and favourable physical conditions; (3) We will utilize that state of the art which has progressed substantially in terms of hydrographic modelling, time series analysis, spatial overlap modelling, and the integration of individual models to population level; (4) The proposed project will bring together a multidisciplinary team with expertise from statistical and numerical modelling to hydrography, to phyto- and zooplankton, to fish ecology, to stock assessors and management strategy evaluators. Recent recruitment studies have succeeded in the Barents and Baltic Seas and it is now timely to apply the methods used in these seas to the North Sea. By enhancing the knowledge on recruitment to major North Sea fish stocks, the project will provide a research based foundation for long-term integrated management and harvesting of important marine resources. The project should work towards strengthening Norway's position among the world-leaders in marine ecosystem based research.
Fish stocks with special emphasis on the recent serial poor recruitment: (1) Quantify the direct and indirect effects of fluctuations in sea temperature on fish recruitment; (2) Examine the role of variability in current patterns affecting recruitment through transport of eggs and larvae; (3) Examine the mechanisms behind the variability in inflow of C. finmarchicus to the North Sea; (4) Determine the effects on fish recruitment of the observed switch from C. finmarchicus to C. helgolandicus and towards smaller zooplankton species; (5) Address the effects on recruitment of fisheries-induced changes in fish stock reproductive potential including abundance, age and size composition of spawners; (6) Determine the role of planktivorous fish, especially herring and sprat, as regulators of recruitment through predation on fish larvae.
Keywords
Impacts;
Climate change;
Recruitment;
Environmental impact;
Broodstocks;
Fish stocks;
Marine Region
6
Central North Sea (27.IVb)
5
Southern North Sea (27.IVc)
13
Northern North Sea (27.IVa)
3
Marine Region Map
