Recent work in the domain of fisheries ecology has shown that major changes are occurring in fish
communities exploited by commercial fisheries. Selective fishing pressure on more highly valued
components of fish communities, and its indirect effects via trophic interactions, are amongst the key
factors proposed to explain these changes....
The objective of the paper is to briefly present a comparative analysis of trends in the characteristics of
selected European fleets, observed over the last fifteen years, as an introduction to three empirical studies
of the behavioural determinants of these trends. The analysis presented aims at (i) describing changes
observed...