A 26-year time series of mortality and growth of the Pacific oyster C. gigas recorded along French coasts

Abstract

AbstractWe used a compiled data set from a monitoring network of oyster production coordinated by IFREMER (the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea). This network monitors the growth and mortality of the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas along French coasts since 1993. The archive, although publicly available, has been challenging to use due to changes in protocols and little information on metadata. Here, we describe data collection for almost 30 years, cleaning and processing. For 13 locations, we modeled growth and mortality of spat (less than one-year-old individuals) and half-grown oysters (between one and two-year-old individuals) as a function of time to cope with changes in data acquisition frequency, and produced standardized annual growth and cumulative mortality indicators to improve data usability. This improved database is expected to be used by ecologists interested in the evolution of life-cycle indicators of a marine species under the influence of climate change. It can also be valuable for epidemiologists because mortality data traces the emergence and spread of a massive epizootic.