Robin Faillettaz

Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer | Ifremer · Laboratory of Fisheries Technology and Biology (LTBH)

Through the advancement of observation systems, our vision has far extended its reach into the world of fishes, and how they interact with fishing gears—breaking through physical boundaries and visually adapting to challenging conditions in marine environments. As marine sciences step into the era of artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning mode...

The larval stage is the main dispersive process of most marine teleost species. The degree to which larval behavior controls dispersal has been a subject of debate. Here, we apply a cross-species meta-analysis, focusing on the fundamental question of whether larval fish use external cues for directional movement (i.e., directed movement). Under the...

The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) disaster released 3.19 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) in 2010, overlapping the habitat of pelagic fish populations. Using mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus)─a highly migratory marine teleost present in the GOM during the spill─as a model species, laboratory experiments demonstrate injuries to phy...

The French fishing industry is becoming increasingly environmentally aware and likely to adopt more sustainable fishing gears. As a result, fishers are showing a growing interest in sustainable fish pots. This experiment aimed to develop a fish pot concept specifically based on target species behavior in French coastal waters. First, the consultati...

Predictive selectivity modelling is used to study fishing gear selectivity. These models rely on fish morphology parameters and fall-through experiments. Here, we developed a model of the mechanical interaction between a fish and a netting mesh during an escape attempt. In this model, the fish is described with three parameters: the first parameter...

The North Atlantic marine ecosystem has been expected to adjust imminently to a negative phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Recent results suggest, however, that the AMO is not a regular internal source of variability, but has been driven by both volcanism and sulphate aerosol emissions that have influenced temperature negatively...

Identifying complex behaviors such as spawning and fine-scale activity is extremely challenging in highly migratory fish species and is becoming increasingly critical knowledge for fisheries management in a warming ocean. Habitat use and migratory pathways have been extensively studied in marine animals using pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs),...

The larval stage is the main dispersive mechanism of most marine teleost fish species. The degree to which larval behavior controls dispersal outcome has been a subject of debate in the past decades. Multiple studies demonstrated orientation mechanisms in several species separately, however a cross-species analysis examining fundamental orientation...

During the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout, photooxidation of surface oil led to the formation of persistent photooxidized compounds, still found in shoreline sediments a decade later. Studies demonstrated that photooxidation modified both biodegradation rates of the surface oil and the effectiveness of aerial dispersant applications. Despite the s...

The droplet size distribution (DSD) formed by gas-saturated oil jets is one of the most important characteristics of the flow to understand and model the fate of uncontrolled deep-sea oil spills. The shape of the DSD, generally modeled as a theoretical lognormal, Rosin-Rammler or non-fundamental distribution function, defines the size and the mass...

Understanding the orientation behavior and capabilities in early life history (ELH) of fishes is critical for studying their dispersal but has, surprisingly, never been tested in any pelagic species. We here investigate the ontogeny of orientation and swimming abilities of the pelagic Coryphaena hippurus Linnaeus, 1758 larvae, hereafter mahi-mahi,...

The presence of shells of the Atlantic rangia, Rangia cuneata, a brackish-water species native from the Gulf of Mexico also known as gulf wedge clam, was reported in 2017 on the French coasts of the English Channel, in the waterway that connects Caen to the sea. However, no information was available on whether a population of this alien species had...

Modeling of large-scale oil transport and fate resulting from deep-sea oil spills is highly complex due to a number of bio-chemo-geophysical interactions, which are often empirically based. Predicting mass-conserved total petroleum hydrocarbon concentrations is thus still a challenge for most oil spill models. In addition, dynamic quantification an...

As deep-sea oil exploitation increases worldwide, the probability of another Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout also increases. The DWH disaster directly impacted the coastal communities of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) with 11 deaths and the release of 172.2 million gallons of gas-saturated oil, covering over 1000 miles of coastline and contaminating an e...

Most coastal fish species spend their early life stages in the pelagic environment, before settling in coastal habitats. The variability in the arrival of larvae to coastal habitats provide information on the species’ biology and recruitment potential. To explore the dynamics of larval fish supply to coastal habitats in the NW Mediterranean Sea, 13...

The Atlantic bluefin tuna (hereafter referred to as “bluefin tuna”), one of the world’s most valuable and exploited fish species, has been declining in abundance throughout the Atlantic from the 1960s until the mid-2000s. Following the establishment of drastic management measures, the stock has started to recover recently and, as a result, stakehol...

After the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion, an estimated 172.2 million gallons of gas-saturated oil was discharged uncontrollably into the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest deep-sea blowout in history. In an attempt to keep the oil submerged, massive quantities of the chemical dispersant Corexit® 9500 were deployed 1522 m deep at the gush...

Artificial structures in ports are commonly colonized by non-indigenous epifauna that tolerate high pollution levels. Bioconstructions built by alien species may offer sheltered microhabitats for motile (vagile) animals but biofouling often becomes detrimental to human activities. In this context, the present study provides an inventory of 1) the e...

The presence of dusky grouper Epinephelus marginatus settlement-stage larvae in the Ligurian Sea is reported. Epinephelus marginatus populations are slowly recovering along the french Mediterranean coast since the establishment of a moratorium on spearfishing in 1993 but still remain spatially restricted to marine protected areas. The occurrence of...

Most demersal fishes undergo a dispersal phase as larvae, which strongly influences the connectivity among adult populations and, consequently, their genetic structure and replenishment opportunities. Because this phase is difficult to observe directly, it is frequently simulated through numerical models, most of which consider larvae as passive or...

Most coastal fishes display a bipartite life history, whereby adults live on the coast and are quite sedentery but produce larvae that are pelagic for a few days to a few weeks. The outcome of this pelagic episode influences future stocks of adults as well as the connectity among coastal populations. We monitor the supply of larvae to the bay of Vi...

Historically, the mortality of early-life stages of marine fishes was supposed to be mostly caused by poor feeding during a critical period and aberrant drifting away from favorable recruitment areas. While fish larvae may display remarkable swimming abilities, Hjort’s aberrant drift hypothesis has rarely been tested. In this study, we measured cri...

Historically, the mortality of early-life stages of marine fishes was supposed to be mostly caused by poor feeding during a critical period and aberrant drifting away from favourable recruitment areas. While fish larvae may display remarkable swimming abilities, those have rarely been evaluated as counteracting factors for this aberrant drift. In t...

Imaging systems were developed to explore the fine scale distributions of plankton (<10 m), but they generate huge datasets that are still a challenge to handle rapidly and accurately. So far, imaged organisms have been either classified manually or pre-classified by a computer program and later verified by human operators. In this paper, we post-p...

RÉSUMÉ : La majorité des espèces de poissons côtiers a un cycle de vie comprenant une phase juvénile et adulte démersale et une phase larvaire pélagique. Cette seconde phase représente l’unique opportunité de dispersion pour de nombreuses espèces mais est soumise à une forte mortalité. Aujourd’hui, il est toujours délicat de prédire la connectivité...

La majorité des espèces de poissons côtiers a un cycle de vie comprenant une phase juvénile et adulte démersale et une phase larvaire pélagique. Cette seconde phase représente l’unique opportunité de dispersion pour de nombreuses espèces mais est soumise à une forte mortalité. Aujourd’hui, il est toujours délicat de prédire la connectivité entre le...

Mortality is very high during the pelagic larval phase of fishes but the factors that determine recruitment success remain unclear and hard to predict. Because of their bipartite life history , larvae of coastal species have to head back to the shore at the end of their pelagic episode , to settle. These settlement-stage larvae are known to display...

Current knowledge of zooplankton distribution at very fine scale (~1 m) is limited, as even the most advanced nets integrate over 10s of m of depth and 100s of m horizontally. Yet, this fine scale is the one relevant for biological interactions such as predation or gregarious behaviour. New imaging tools, like the In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging Sy...

Fish larvae are both plankton and nekton. Indeed, recently hatched larvae are poor swimmers and are mainly transported by currents, while older larvae of tropical fishes have been proved to swim at high speed over tens of kilometers, in the lab. While these capabilities gives them the potential to overcome currents, the combined effect of swimming...

Current knowledge of larval fish distribution in the fine-scale (<10m) is limited, as even the most advanced nets integrate over 10s of m of depth and 100s of m horizontally. Yet, this fine-scale is the one relevant for biological interactions such as predation or gregarious behaviour. New imaging tools, like the In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging Sys...

Understanding the dynamics of larval fish recruitment has been of major interest in the past century, but temporal patterns are still difficult to predict. Few studies have tackled larval recruitment in the Mediterranean Sea, all of them short term. We extracted a 7 year time series (2006-2012) of weekly plankton samples and environmental data from...

Alors qu’il était considéré comme le symbole la gestion durable des stocks de Mer du Nord depuis plusieurs années, l’évaluation du stock de Lieu noir 2011 a dévoilé une forte diminution de sa biomasse en 2009. De plus, une augmentation de la compétition spatiale avec d’autres flottilles a été reportée depuis 2008 au nord des Shetlands, où la majori...