Supporting fisheries management in the European context: a reflective approach based on a concrete experience in participatory modeling

In the context of the Common Fisheries Policy, implementation of management plans for fisheries and annual Total Allowable Catches negotiations have led to a growing demand for impact assessment from decision makers and stakeholders. This has led to the development of a number of integrated models used for impact assessment in the European decision support framework based on the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries. A Decision Support Framework has been developed and applied at EU level in this context with the objective to tackle the technical and practical challenges of providing decision support in fisheries. It is based on a technical protocol developed within a participatory approach engaging stakeholders, managers and scientists. After a presentation of the context and challenges identified to support decision in fisheries, the paper presents the approach developed and the lessons learnt from the concrete experience of decision support in the Bay of Biscay Fisheries. Technical challenges related to tools and data are explored as well as challenges related to stakeholders and managers engagement and participation. The paper adopts a reflective approach based on a concrete experience of supporting fisheries management in the European context to explore the technical and practical challenges of participatory modeling. Conclusions highlight the need for developing innovative transdisciplinary platforms for decision support, clarifying roles of each partner.