Maria Grazia Pennino

Instituto Español de Oceanografia (IEO-CSIC)

The mean weight-at-age of fish species is an indicator of fish growth and physiological condition, as well as a basic parameter for assessing and managing fish stocks. Here, we investigate the temporal trends of the mean weight-at-age of four different commercial species with different life strategies: (i) the short-lived pelagic European sardine (...

The redistribution of fish stocks induced by climate change is expected to have global implications for fisheries, particularly the poleward shifts of species. However, the responses of different fishing gears and fleet of countries and their potential attempts to spatially redistribute catches remain unknown. Here, by developing environmental nich...

This paper aims to develop an assessment of the COVID-19 impact on key sectors (small-scale and large fisheries) in Spain, one of the most important maritime regions in the world. We synthesize multiple data sources from across the seafood supply chain to show the relative seafood sector responses and variables of recovery during the pre-COVID-19 p...

Species Distribution Models (SDMs) have been widely applied in ecology to analyze the historical and future patterns of marine species' distributions. With the increasing impact of climate change in recent decades, understanding potential shifts in species distributions has become a crucial challenge. Research on alterations in spatial and temporal...

Estimating changes in the biomass of a fish stock is crucial for successful management. However, fishery assessment may be affected by the quality of the inputs used in stock assessment models. Survey biomass indices derived from fishery-independent and catch per unit effort (CPUE) biomass indices derived from fishery-dependent data are key inputs...

Aim Predicting and acting on the future of ecosystems requires understanding species distribution shifts due to climate change. We investigated which corals are more likely to shift their distribution in the Southwestern Atlantic under a warming scenario. Location Southwestern Atlantic (SWA; 1° N–28° S). Methods We used spatial distribution model...

Canadian fisheries management has embraced the precautionary approach and the incorporation of ecosystem information into decision-making processes. Accurate estimation of fish stock biomass is crucial for ensuring sustainable exploitation of marine resources. Spatio-temporal models can provide improved indices of biomass as they capture spatial an...

Our general purpose is to support the use of known-biomass production models (KBPMs), illustrating their usefulness by addressing the evolution of surplus production (SP) over time and the factors affecting it (e.g. environment). We also demonstrate the utility of KBPMs for multispecies management objectives or for estimating maximum sustainable yi...

Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) are increasingly driven by Earth System Models (ESMs) to better understand marine ecosystem dynamics, and to analyze the effects of alternative management efforts for marine ecosystems under potential scenarios of climate change. However, policy and commercial activities typically occur on seasonal‐to‐decadal time sca...

The proportion of mature fish at length is one of the most important population attributes when evaluating reproductive potential for fish stock assessment purposes. Bias in maturity ogive parameters can lead to fishery management decisions based on misspecified biological reference points. These parameters can vary spatially and temporally, and th...

The European sardine is a pelagic species of great ecological importance for the conservation of the Mediterranean Sea as well as economic importance for the Mediterranean countries. Its fishing has suffered a significant decline in recent years due to various economic, cultural and ecological reasons. This paper focuses on the evolution of sardine...

Bycatch is one of the main causes of mortality among marine megafauna around the world. In the coastal waters of southern Brazil, bycatch in gillnet fisheries affects threatened species that use this region as a breeding and feeding area. The identification of hotspot areas of bycatch is necessary to design and prioritize efficient spatial–temporal...

The Neotropics have vast river catchments with untapped hydroelectric potential, but there are multiple expected negative impacts of dams, including those on local food security and livelihoods. Yet, monitoring of dam effects on subsistence is rare, particularly during initial implementation. Our study assessed changes in human fish consumption nea...

Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) are increasingly forced with Earth System Models (ESMs) to better understand marine ecosystem dynamics, and to analyse the effects of alternative management efforts for marine ecosystems under potential scenarios of global change. However, policy and commercial activities typically occur on seasonal-to-decadal time sc...

Many years after the publication of Beverton and Holt’s on the Dynamics of Exploited Fish Populations in 1957, many of the problems that they highlighted remain unsolved. For example, accurately estimating critical biological and fishing processes such as growth, natural mortality, recruitment, and selectivity continues to be challenging. Despite t...

Understanding the link between key life history parameters and environmental variables to evaluate climate change impact on European hake. Maturity and growth are key life history traits to understand population dynamics, productivity and resilience of fish stocks and thus provide the basis for stock assessment and sustainable management of the sp...

Species distribution modelling (SDM) of marine organisms is widely developed for biogeography, ecology and management purposes. However, most studies continue to focus on the Global North, with fewer examples for the Global South. We carried out a bibliometric analysis to characterise aspects of studies conducting SDM for species in the Southwester...

The main aim of the ICES WKMEGRIM benchmark was to standardize, increase transparency, and review the input data of the assessment for three megrim stocks; namely two Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis stocks in divisions 7.b–k, 8.a–b, and 8.d (meg.27.7b-k8abd) and divisions 8.c and 9.a (meg.27.8c9a), as well as L. boscii in divisions 8.c and 9.a (ldb.27.8...

Don't ask don't tell: when science answers unwelcome questions Management strategy evaluation (MSE) generally involves defining a decision problem, specifying objectives, and simulating the managed system to help evaluate uncertainties, risks, and trade-offs of management alternatives. Stakeholders' involvement is a core component of MSE to design...

Globally, elasmobranch species have been declining in abundance due to fishery activities. This conservation issue calls for effective management strategies and increasing efforts to protect these species. The declining status of elasmobranchs in the Mediterranean Sea is alarming as well. Reversing such dramatic trends requires tackling fishing pre...

Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) have been developed to analyse the past and future dynamics of life in the oceans. One of such efforts is EcoOcean, a complex, mechanistic and spatio-temporal explicit MEM of the global oceans based on a trophodynamic core. EcoOcean requires as inputs the species native ranges and suitable habitats, and for key enviro...

In ecology we may find scenarios where the same phenomenon (species occurrence, species abundance, etc.) is observed using two different types of samplers. For instance, species data can be collected from scientific surveys with a completely random sample pattern, but also from opportunistic sampling (e.g., whale or bird watching fishery commercial...

Species Distribution Models are pivotal for fisheries management. There has been an increasing number of fishery data sources available, making data integration an attractive way to improve model predictions. A wide range of methods have been applied to integrate different datasets in different disciplines. We focus on the use of Integrated Species...

The assessment of the status of fisheries resources is pivotal due to the importance of marine resources in global food security and to halt the ongoing decline in marine biodiversity. Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus) is one of the most valuable resources in the Northeast Atlantic. However, overfishing has caused the decline of several Nephrops...

Fishing is one of the most widespread and important human activities in coastal ecosystems and it plays a fundamental role in employment and the economy of coastal communities. However, in the period 2020 to 2021, the global outbreak of COVID-19 negatively affected fishing economic activity. Against this background, Andalusia (South of Spain) is an...

Seabirds are bioindicators of marine ecosystems health and one of the world's most endangered avian groups. The creation of marine protected areas plays an important role in the conservation of marine environment and its biodiversity. The distributions of top predators, as seabirds, have been commonly used for the management and creation of these f...

By evaluating genetic variation across the entire genome, one can address existing questions in a novel way while raising new ones. The latter include how different local environments influence adaptive and neutral genomic variation within and among populations, providing insights into local adaptation of natural populations and their responses to...

Ecological niche models (ENMs) and species distribution models (SDMs) have been widely applied to various studies relevant to biogeography, conservation biology, and ecology. These modelling techniques seek to develop spatial maps for projecting , among others past, current, and future species distributions. Born in the field of terrestrial ecology...

Despite its relevance, the economic contribution of small-scale fisheries to poverty alleviation is still poorly understood. This study investigates why some fishers perform economically better in fisheries than others under similar conditions and whether these variations in performance were due to individual adaptive strategies related to fishing...

European hake (Merluccius merluccius) is a commercially important resource in Iberian Atlantic waters. Despite the recovery plan implemented in 2006 and the multiannual management plan for western waters, fishing mortality is still higher than that corresponding to the maximum sustainable yield for the southern European hake stock. The biological p...

The level of habitat availability influences genetic divergence among populations and the genetic diversity within populations. In the marine environment, near-shore species are among the most sensitive to habitat changes. Knowledge of how historical environmental change affected habitat availability and genetic variation can be applied to the deve...

Fish body condition and growth are two interrelated traits closely associated with species life history and fitness, whose trade-off can ultimately impact population dynamics albeit seldom empirically demonstrated. They can intricately affect survival rates, which are particularly relevant for species under exploitation. Using individual spatiotemp...

Ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) aims to go beyond single-species management by incorporating ecosystem considerations to guarantee the sustainable use of marine resources. Although many countries have formally committed to the implementation of EBFM, at a practical level progress has been very slow. At the analytical level, many advance...

Despite the marine environment being typified by a lack of obvious barriers to dispersal, levels of genetic divergence can arise in marine organisms from historical changes in habitat availability, current oceanographic regimes and anthropogenic factors. Here we describe the genetic structure of the Gray Parrotfish, Sparisoma axillare, and identify...

Recently, various state-space implementations of surplus production models (SPMs) have been developed for data-limited stocks. Often, catches and fishing effort are underestimated and discards are ignored. This results in biased estimates of stock status and reference points. Therefore, we conduct a sensitivity analysis for different under-reportin...

It is widely known that the abundance and distribution dynamics of populations of small pelagic clupeid fish, such as sardines and anchovies, are affected by large-scale climate variability, which may lead to changeovers to new regimes of small pelagics. However, long-distance climatic oscillations , such as El Niño/La Niña and the Pacific Decadal...

Increasing the knowledge of approaches to estimate the status of data-limited stocks is of crucial importance since the vast majority of stocks are data-limited, i.e., there is not enough data to conduct a fully integrated statistical catch-at-age or at-length assessment. Among the different data-limited methods, surplus production models (SPMs) ar...

Small pelagic fish (SPF) species such as European sardine Sardina pilchardus , European anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus , round sardinella Sardinella aurita and European sprat Sprattus sprattus play important ecological roles in the Mediterranean Sea marine ecosystem. However, changes in SPF abundance and biomass have recently been observed in the b...

Bayes factor, defined as the ratio of the marginal likelihood functions of two competing models, is the natural Bayesian procedure for model selection. Marginal likelihoods are usually computationally demanding and complex. This scenario is particularly cumbersome in linear mixed models (LMMs) because marginal likelihood functions involve integrals...

Spatial-explicit ecosystem models, such as Ecopath with Ecosim and Ecospace (EwE), are useful tools for exploring ecosystem-based management strategies, as they integrate ecological processes, environmental dynamics and human activities. EwE further allows for the spatial-temporal simulation of use and conservation scenarios, helping to prioritize...

Bycatch is one of the main causes of mortality of marine megafauna over the world. In the coastal waters of southern Brazil, bycatch in gillnet fisheries affects threatened species that use this region as a breeding and feeding area. The identification of hotspot areas of bycatch is necessary to design and prioritize efficient spatial-temporal clos...

Although there is a great knowledge about individual anthropogenic threats to different fish species in the Mediterranean Sea, little is known about how these threats accumulate and interact to affect fish species richness in conjunction with environmental dynamics. This study assesses the role of these threats in the fish richness component and id...

Rfishpop is an R package for analyzing exploited populations. More precisely, our packa\-ge implements a completed Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) cycle. MSE is a tool that scientists can use to simulate the behaviour of a fisheries system and allow them to test whether potential management procedures can achieve pre-agreed management objecti...

Length-based methods have been widely applied to estimate biological parameters and to understand the dynamics of marine resource populations within the category of data-limited stocks. However, few studies have been performed to date to test the parameter sensitivity of length-based methods on stocks with different traits and fishery contexts. In...

Ecosystem models, such as Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE), are useful tools for developing ecosystem-based management strategies. Model development, however, requires data for the estimation of input parameters including time series for calibration. Most small-scale fisheries lack such information, making it difficult to reliably use ecosystem models for...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a promising management tool for the conservation and recovery of marine ecosystems, as well as fishery management. MPAs are generally established as permanent closures but marine systems are dynamic, which has generated debate in favour of more dynamic designs. As a consequence, the identification of priority areas...

The common sole (Solea solea) is a species of flatfish of great commercial relevance in the northern Atlantic Iberian waters. Although many studies investigated the early life-stage of this species, little is known on the adult phases and the size structure of the population. Here we provide an analysis of the spatiotemporal distribution of adult’s...

Length-based methods have been widely applied to estimate biological parameters and understand the dynamics of marine resource populations within data-limited stocks. However, to date few studies have tested the sensitivity of parameters in length-based methods examining stocks with different traits and fishery contexts. In the Bay of Biscay and th...

The Mediterranean Sea is a large marine ecosystem with high heterogeneity in both environmental and ecological characteristics. It presents clear gradients from north to south and west to east. It is also an important area in terms of biodiversity and conservation of vulnerable species, and it suffers from several cumulative human impacts, such as...

Small pelagic fish (SPF) are key organisms for the functioning of pelagic marine ecosystems. In recent decades, these species have undergone significant changes in biomass, growth and body condition in the Mediterranean Sea. Seasonal and spatial information about changes in biological and ecological traits of SPF and their relationship with environ...