INTRODUCTION

The main objective of this chapter is to present an overview and discussion of the fisheries in the French Indian Ocean territories, which are quite different from one administrative unit to another, and have been evolving rapidly since the end of the 1990s. It will be shown that fisheries generally represent an important activity in the small island states and territories. However, pressure on the fishery resource in French Indian Ocean waters is quite significant and overexploitation has resulted in a dramatic fall in the southern catch, and has forced the closure of the fisheries for several commercial species. The long-term sustainability of the fishery will largely depend on continued French involvement and success in preventing foreign illegal fishing in its EEZ, as well as on better knowledge and management of fish stocks.

In the Indian Ocean, France exercises sovereignty over ten different island territories that can be regrouped into six distinct administrative units (Table 9.1 and Figure 9.1). Only two of these ten territories have a permanent population and form a main administrative unit of their own: Réunion Island (also known as La Réunion) in the Mascarene Archipelago, which is both a France Overseas Department (DOM) and an Overseas Region (ROM); and Mayotte, in the Comoros Archipelago, which now has the status of an Overseas Collectivity of the French Republic (COM). The eight other island territories are administratively linked to the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (FSAL) of which they form four of its five districts, namely Crozet, Kerguelen, Saint-Paul and Amsterdam, and the Scattered Islands (Îles Éparses). While the first three FSAL districts are made up of unique island groups located in the Southern Indian Ocean, the Scattered Islands are made of five very small and isolated island features in the vicinity of Madagascar (Bassas da India, Europa I., Glorioso Is, Juan de Nova I., and Tromelin I.).