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H2020Individual fellowship2015–2017

FISHARC · FISHing Ancient Reasons to address current Concerns

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2015-10-01 → 2017-09-30
EU contribution
€183,455
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

FISHing Ancient Reasons to address current Concerns

Oceans hold a fish resource that provides food for half of the 7 billion people on the planet today. In the current context of global changes, factors such as climate change will reshape marine diversity and fisheries production. However, our understanding of marine ecosystem “health” and the resilience of commercial fish stocks is challenged by the time depth of existing historical fisheries. Archaeological evidence provides a unique source of cultural, ecological and environmental information to extend our knowledge of marine fisheries and their effect on coastal ecosystems in the past. Through the analysis of pre-historic, historic and modern fish remains from the Iberian Peninsula, FISHARC has explored (1) the origin and evolution of fishing activities in the Northeast Atlantic, and (2) their impacts on fish biodiversity, behaviour and ecology through time and space. The project has been particularly focused on two important commercial species: European hake (Figure 1) and North Atlantic cod. FISHARC has examined human and environmental impacts on their biogeography, trophic level and population structure. Zooarchaeological and stable isotope analyses have been carried out on fish remains dating since the earliest marine fishing records to provide a baseline for a European pristine fishery.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Europe’s pristine marine fisheries probably originated in estuarine biotopes rather than on the open shore, while many of what we now consider offshore species were also originally denizens of much shallower waters. These new data do not emerge from traditional historical data, such as landing records, but from a less conventional source: zooarchaeolo-gy. This archaeological data also suggests that estuarine fish were particularly vulnerable to fishing pressure. Through the analysis of pre-historic, historic and modern fish remains from the Iberian Peninsula, FISHARC will explore (1) the origin and evolution of fishing activities in the Northeast Atlantic, and (2) their impacts on fish biodiversity, behaviour and ecology through time and space, with a particular focus on the commercially import species of cod and hake. The project will pair the zooarchaeological expertise of Laura Llorente-Rodríguez, with the state-of-the art biomolecular facil-ities of the BioArCh at the University of York, to 1) develop new molecular methods for accurate fish species identifica-tion; and 2) apply new stable isotope approaches to examine human impacts on the biogeography, trophic level and pop-ulation structure of North Atlantic cod and hake through time. This project will explore a unique source of cultural, ecological and environmental data preserved in archaeological record to generate invaluable baseline data on pre-industrial fish population levels immediately applicable to marine conservation and management issues.KEYWORDS: fishing origin, fishing evolution, Norhteast Atlantic, ichtyoarchaeology, ecological baselines

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union