PhD project title: Impact of fishing on structural seabed fauna

Supervision: Dr Jan G. Hiddink and Pr. Michel J. Kaiser

Scientific background:

I completed the equivalent of an MSc in Fisheries Sciences at ENSAR (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Agronomie de Rennes, France) in September 2007.
I started my studies with a 2 year preparatory programme in Biology, Mathematics and Physics before being admitted in a higher institution specialising in Agricultural Sciences in general. Finally, I specialised in fisheries during the last year (statistics, biology, economics, and resources management, meetings and field work with stakeholders). For my final year project I studied the Norway pout (Trisopterus esmarkii) population dynamics, with focus on growth and maturity to find evidence of potential spawning mortality. I was working on this project at DTU-Aqua (formerly DIFRES, Danish Institute for Fisheries Research) in Copenhagen, under the supervision of Rasmus Nielsen, senior scientist responsible for the Norway pout stock assessment in the ICES North Sea Skagerrak and Kattegat Working Group. My work on this project continued until February of 2008 when I started my PhD in Menai Bridge.

Broad objectives of the PhD research:

The first aim of my research is to review the development and growth of structural seabed fauna in relation to environmental factors and develop a model to predict its distribution in UK shelf seas. The studied structural fauna, i.e. the forming habitat fauna, should count biogenic reefs, such as mussel beds, or other sessile fauna modifying the present seabed and increasing the complexity of the habitat, such as sponges, sea fans, corals… The following objective is to assess this level of complexity and the loss in this induced by human or environmental disturbance. The final objective is to model the distribution and complexity of structural fauna in relation to environment and human impact and assess the consequences for the biomass, production and diversity of associated fauna.

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