This report is a presentation of environmental information on the Crozet oceanic zone that was obtained during the CROMEBA project (CROzet Marine Ecosystem Based Management). This project aims to determine the prerequisites at the environmental or biodiversity levels to propose new conservation measures that would expand geographically in the EEZ the actual National Marine Nature Reserve. The natural reserve is actually limited to the 12 nautical miles surrounding 4 islands of the archipelago.
This report follows the CCAMLR workshop on Planning Domain 5 with focusing on the Crozet islands oceanic zone (Koubbi et al., 2012).
This report is gives:
1. A summary of the ecological characteristics of the Crozet oceanic zone on:
- Pelagic and benthic biodiversity,
- Marine birds and mammals tracked from the Possession islands,
- Killer whales and sperm whales linked to fisheries observations.
2. An ecoregionalisation combining:
- The pelagic regions obtained from a classification of physical oceanographic features (fronts, retention zones, …) and chlorophyll-a which influence the pelagic food web including top predators,
- Bathomes influencing benthic and demersal fish ichthyofauna,
3. Recommendations for future researches and monitoring in the context of climate change consequences on subantarctic areas.