Seascape Genetics and Geo-Visualization in Support of Fisheries Management and the European Common Fisheries Policy

The genetic characterization of marine fish populations has important implications for fisheries management including control and enforcement. It helps to determine the match between biological entities (fish populations) and management units (fish stocks), and can support conservation measures. Moreover in a control and enforcement context it constitutes a valuable asset for traceability schemes, as genetic analysis allows for the identification of the geographic origin of fish and fish products.

Seascape genetics puts the genetic population structure of a marine species in the context of its surrounding environment. This includes parameters such as temperature, salinity, chlorophyll concentration, currents and land barriers. The analysis of these parameters not only helps to reveal population structure of marine species, and its change over time, but also contributes to an understanding of the underlying mechanisms leading to the observed structure. This approach is highly valuable when examining and identifying populations of marine fish, which is notoriously difficult.

In this paper we present a case study based on genetic marker analysis using Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs): Four commercially important species for the European market, Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), European hake (Merluccius merluccius), common sole (Solea solea) and Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus), have been genetically characterized. The results have been integrated into a web-based geo-visualization platform putting them in the context of environmental parameters. We discuss the benefits arising from such an approach in the context of relevant, existing marine policies of the European Union (EU).

Despite the growing awareness of the value of genetic analysis for the fisheries sector, it remains difficult to properly communicate scientific information to non scientific stakeholders. Genetic information resulting from research, which is relevant for the understanding of marine fish population structure, must be transferred to control and enforcement authorities, and fisheries management bodies so that it can be employed for inspections and decision finding on a routine basis. To this effect, our web-based geovisualization platform can render population genetic information based on seascape genetics more accessible to experts and non-experts alike.

Broadly speaking, our objective is to facilitate information transfer from the scientific domain in such a way that it can be efficiently employed in the context the European Union Common Fisheries Policy and of fisheries management schemes in general.