To anticipate the response of fish populations to climate change, we developed a framework that integrates requirements in all life stages to assess impacts across the entire life cycle. The framework was applied on plaice ( P leuronectes platessa ) and Atlantic herring ( C lupea harengus ) in the N orth S ea, A tlantic cod ( G adus morhua ) in the N orwegian/ B arents S eas and E uropean anchovy ( E ngraulis encrasicolus ) in...

Understanding and predicting the distribution of organisms in heterogeneous environments lies at the heart of ecology. The spatial distribution of fish populations observed in the wild results from the complex interactions of multiple controls both external or internal to the fish populations. Whilst species distribution models (SDMs) have been mostly concerned with static description of species distribution as a function of e...

Fish recruitment is the result of the integration of small‐scale processes affecting larval survival over a season and large oceanic areas. A hydrodynamic model was used to explore and model these physical–biological interaction mechanisms and then to perform the integration from individual to population scales in order to provide recruitment predictions for fisheries management. This method was applied to the case of anchovy...

A growth and survival model of the early life stages was run along virtual drift trajectories tracked in a hydrodynamic model to simulate the annual recruitment process of anchovy ( Engraulis encrasicolus ) in the Bay of Biscay (NE Atlantic). These biophysical simulations concerning three different years were analysed in order to investigate the influence of environment and spawning dynamics on the survival of larvae and juven...

The spatial extent of small pelagic fish spawning habitat is influenced by environmental factors and by the state of the adult population. In return, the configuration of spawning habitat affects recruitment and therefore the future structure of the adult population. Interannual changes in spatial patterns of spawning reflect variations in adult population structures and their environment. The present study describes the histo...

Modelling the vertical distribution of fish eggs is important when assessing fish stocks with egg production methods and for monitoring the reproductive potential of fish populations. Fish eggs are passive particles and their vertical distribution is determined by a few parameters such as egg density, egg diameter, wind‐ and tide‐induced turbulence, and vertical hydrographic structure. A one‐dimensional vertical biophysical, n...

The relation between growth and survival was investigated using the otolith growth data collected during repeated larval surveys (May–July) and a juvenile survey (September) undertaken in 1999 on anchovy spawning and nursery grounds in the Bay of Biscay (NE Atlantic). The paper describes the methodology for reading the larval and juvenile otoliths, for reconstructing the correspondence in space and time between juveniles and l...

Over the past 10 years, fisheries scientists gradually adopted geostatistical tools when analysing fish stock survey data for estimating population abundance. First, the relation between model‐based variance estimates and covariance structure enabled estimation of survey precision for non‐random survey designs. The possibility of using spatial covariance for optimising sampling strategy has been a second motive for using geost...