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Using underwater video to assess megabenthic community vulnerability to trawling in the Grande Vasière (Bay of Biscay)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2017

LAURÈNE MÉRILLET ,
MAUD MOUCHET ,
MARIANNE ROBERT ,
MICHÈLE SALAÜN ,
LUCIE SCHUCK ,
SANDRINE VAZ  and
DOROTHÉE KOPP
LAURÈNE MÉRILLET*
Affiliation:
UMR 7204 MNHN-UPMC-CNRS Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation, 43 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France Ifremer, Unité Sciences et Technologies Halieutiques, Laboratoire de Technologie et Biologie Halieutique, 8 rue François Toullec, 56100 Lorient, France
MAUD MOUCHET
Affiliation:
UMR 7204 MNHN-UPMC-CNRS Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation, 43 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France
MARIANNE ROBERT
Affiliation:
Ifremer, Unité Sciences et Technologies Halieutiques, Laboratoire de Technologie et Biologie Halieutique, 8 rue François Toullec, 56100 Lorient, France
MICHÈLE SALAÜN
Affiliation:
Ifremer, Unité Sciences et Technologies Halieutiques, Laboratoire de Technologie et Biologie Halieutique, 8 rue François Toullec, 56100 Lorient, France
LUCIE SCHUCK
Affiliation:
Ifremer, Unité Sciences et Technologies Halieutiques, Laboratoire de Technologie et Biologie Halieutique, 8 rue François Toullec, 56100 Lorient, France
SANDRINE VAZ
Affiliation:
Ifremer, Laboratoire Halieutique Méditerranée, UMR MARBEC, Avenue Jean Monnet, 34200 Sète, France
DOROTHÉE KOPP
Affiliation:
Ifremer, Unité Sciences et Technologies Halieutiques, Laboratoire de Technologie et Biologie Halieutique, 8 rue François Toullec, 56100 Lorient, France
*
*Correspondence: Laurène Mérillet email: laurene.merillet@gmail.com
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Summary

Trawling activities are considered to be one of the main sources of disturbance to the seabed worldwide. We aimed to disentangle the dominance of environmental variations and trawling intensity in order to explain the distribution of diversity patterns over 152 sampling sites in the French trawl fishing-ground, the Grande Vasière. Using a towed underwater video device, we identified 39 taxa to the finest taxonomic level possible, which were clustered according to their vulnerability to trawling disturbance based on functional traits. Using generalized linear models, we investigated whether the density distribution of each vulnerability group was sensitive to trawling intensity and habitat characteristics. Our analyses revealed a structuring effect of depth and substratum on community structure. The distribution of the more vulnerable group was a negative function of trawling intensity, while the distributions of the less vulnerable groups were independent of trawling intensity. Video monitoring coupled with trait-based vulnerability assessment of macro-epibenthic communities might be more relevant than the traditional taxonomic approach to identifying the areas that are most vulnerable to fishing activities in conservation planning.

Keywords

Bay of Biscaybiodiversitybottom trawlfishingunderwater videovulnerability
Type
Non-Thematic Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 45 , Issue 2: Thematic section. Humans and Island Environments , June 2018 , pp. 163 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2017 

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Footnotes

Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892917000480

References

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