The ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management and, more specifically,
the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive require the assessment of
the state and dynamics of an ecosystem in order to determine suitable
management strategies. This paper takes an analytical approach to assess the
state of the Bay of Biscay ecosystem in the early 1990s, chosen as a period
of reference because key monitoring data series have been collected since
then. To assess the state of the ecosystem, the pressures exerted by six
broad categories of human activities were examined. A literature review of
the ecosystem components was made and a component tree was tailored
according to data availability. Data rich components were subdivided into
subcomponents for their assessment while data poor components were assessed
at an aggregated level. The component tree of the ecosystem comprised six
main branches, four of which further divided into sub-components. In total,
assessments were carried out at the level of 19 components. For four of
these (fished species, sensitive fish species, marine mammals and turtles)
the overall assessments were made combining the status of individual
species. Impact from human activities were categorised as (i) “widespread”
over the whole Bay of Biscay or “local” and (ii) “possible” when they
could be logically expected or “documented” when they were reported in the
literature. Fishing appeared to be the only activity exerting widespread
documented impacts on several ecosystem components. Terrestrial activities
had some possible and documented widespread impacts. With the exception of
marine transport impacting seabirds at the regional scale through oil
pollution, other activities had only local impacts, mostly nearshore. The
reference state in the early 1990s, suggests that continuation of monitoring
of vertebrates as well as estuarine and coastal habitats must be central to
the monitoring programme and management strategies to be set in the context
of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Additional monitoring is also
required for benthos, substrate and micro-organisms.