The FinE project is set up to investigate the prevalence of fisheries-induced evolutionary changes in life-history traits of exploited fish stocks in European and North American waters. The aims are to unravel the underlying mechanisms of change ranging from the phenotypic to the genetic level, to evaluate their consequences on population and fisheries dynamics, and to provide recommendations for evolutionarily enlightened management. This objective necessi-tates the development and application of novel methodological tools for investigating field data both at phenotypic and genetic levels, together with the setup of relevant experiments on model species and the careful construction of theoretical models suitable for complementing field data analyses and for evaluating managerial options. The project’s overall objective can be broken down into three main lines of research:

1. Phenotypic case studies will aim at documenting phenotypic trends in life-history traits relevant for the demography and productivity of exploited fish populations, thus focusing on maturation, reproductive effort, and growth.

2. Genetics analyses will aim to elucidate the genetic basis of fisheries-induced evolutionary changes suggested by phenotypic analysis.

3. Eco-genetic models will be designed for evaluating alternative hypotheses advanced to explain observed data; for assessing the ecological consequences of fisheries-induced evolution in terms of exploited stock dynamics, viability and recovery, as well as fisheries yield; and for comparing various management scenarios.
The Project has 17 partners from 13 European countries representing governamental research institutions within the maritime sector and universities.