Abstract

The coastal marine fisheries are threatens of collapse due to the increment of the fishing effort and the anthropogenic impacts that directly and indirectly degrade the habitat and the ecological systems of which the fishing activity depends. Therefore, there is a necessity of additional fisheries management measures to those used traditionally that contribute to protect the fishing resources and to improve the fishing production. The purpose of this work is to identify potentials MPAs for the fisheries management of the demersals resources by means of an analysis of the relationship among the spatial distribution of population and ecological aspects of these resources in the north area of the Colombian Caribbean Sea with the habitat characteristics (temperature, salinity, depth, sediment type). The relationship of the population structure of the demersals fishes with the habitat conditions was established, which result important when we want to identify MPAs as a tool of sustainable fisheries management under an ecosystem approach. By means of spatial modelisation the area of spatial distribution of demersals fishes was calculated (5805.8 km2) and of this, the juvenile ones were located between Dibulla and the Buritaca river in an area of 393.1 km2 and the area of most diversity 297.0 km2 was located in the Guajira region, which both represents 11.9% of the spatial distribution of the demersals fishes.

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