Histories of sardine fisheries. architecture and environment in the Bay of Biscay (1846-1965).

Abstract

Background: This study combines historical cartography and statistical analysis to examine France Atlantic's sardine fisheries across time (1846-1965) and spatial scales, from individual harbours to the continental shelf. It aims to use interdisciplinary methods to identify the relations between European sardine populations ( Sardina pilchardus), climatic fluctuations, and the material structures associated with fishing-including vessels and coastal infrastructures. The underlying hypothesis is that long-term sardines fluctuations in landings influenced the way we built on land and, in turn, exerted pressures on sardines ecologies.

Methods: Historical data on fishing vessels, coastal infrastructures, sardine landings, territorial occupation by canneries, fishing grounds, and fisher censuses were compiled to reconstruct the temporalities of fishing landscapes. First, we quantified the spatial expansion of canneries and shoreline infrastructures. While canneries were the product of private industrial investment, shoreline infrastructures included both private and public developments. Given the limited availability of detailed funding records, subsequent analyses focused on publicly funded coastal works, for which investment amounts and construction timelines could be reconstructed and compared with profits derived from fish landings. Second, in the absence of consistent financial records or urban plans at the continental-shelf scale, population census data were used as a proxy for urban growth and related to fishing effort to identify areas of intensified pressure. These patterns were then compared with the spatial distribution of fishing grounds. Finally, sardine landings were analysed against environmental indices and vessel characteristics to assess their relative influence.

Results: The assessment revealed: (1) a long-term decline in sardine landings that does not seem to be influenced by environmental variability; (2) the continuing expansion of harbour infrastructures and vessels tonnage even when landing values declined; (3) trends toward the spatial concentration of fishing effort.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that harbour works were driven less by an objective awareness of ecological pressure than by latent development projects activated during fishing crises. Rather than serving as a passive backdrop to the history of fisheries, these infrastructures actively shaped the circulation of sardine landings, capital investment, and fishing activity along the coast.