A lot of pelagic fish are known to school and/or aggregate on particular sites such as seamounts or floating objects. Many fisheries use these behavioral characteristics and schooling fish are among the most heavily exploited species in the world's oceans. The use of particular aggregating sites such as floating objects (Fish Aggregating Devices or FADs) or seamounts for some species like tropical tuna considerably modified the exploitation patterns. Our knowledge on the characteristics and dynamics of those schools and aggregations, as well as their origins, is, however, very poor. Because of this lack of knowledge, stock assessment and fishery management are rarely based on these units (schools and aggregations), while they certainly represent key components of the system. Schooling behavior of fish have mainly been studied through observations on captive fish in aquarium, and on very small sized groups. Pelagic schools and aggregations, however, usually comprise thousands of individuals and the links between the behavior of small captive schools to the behavior of large schools in the ocean, and therefore to fishery management, are not easy.



Objectives
The overall objective of this workshop is to examine how we could improve our knowledge on the basic mechanisms of the collective behavior of pelagic fish. Ethologists working on captive animals are rarely connected to fishery biologists and fishery managers. Moreover, scientists working on small pelagic fish and those working on large pelagic fish seldom meet. Studying the schooling and aggregation behavior of pelagic fish is a difficult task as: (1) pelagic fish are often difficult to maintain in captivity, and the sizes of tanks are usually not compatible for developing experiments on the collective behavior of these fish, (2) observing pelagic fish in the ocean is always a challenge. In particular, it is noteworthy that scientists working on small pelagic fish and those working on large pelagic fish do not use the same tools to observe their animals. The formers use acoustics (echosounder and sonars) to detect and sometimes track schools, but it is very difficult for them to study the individual behavior of individuals within schools. On the contrary, the latters are used to deal with the individual behavior (fine- and large-scale tracking of individuals), but not with the collective behavior of fish, as it is quite difficult to observe a school of large pelagic fish. Schooling behavior is therefore quite never included in movement or population models because of this lack of knowledge, while it is likely that movements of a schooling individual are not those of a solitary animal. Moreover, studying the relationships between different species gathered in same schools or aggregations is a major issue for an ecosystem-based management of pelagic fisheries. One of the main practical objectives of this workshop is therefore to gather scientists working in this field, including studies on captive animals, in situ observations with various techniques, models.

Organizers:
Laurent Dagorn, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD, France) - dagorn@ird.fr - Ph: +1 (808) 236-7422
Kim Holland, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), University of Hawaii - kholland@hawaii.edu - Ph: +1 (808) 236-7410

Sponsor:
Pelagic Fisheries Research Program (PFRP) - http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PFRP/
Joint Institute for Marine & Atmospheric Research
School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology
University of Hawaii at Manoa
1000 Pope Road, MSB 312
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 USA
Tel. (808) 956-8083, Fax (808) 956-4104
Program Manager: Dr. John Sibert
email: jsibert@soest.hawaii.edu