Le comportement agrégatif des dorades coryphènes (Coryphaena hippurus) autour des objets flottants

The aggregative behaviour of the dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) is studied in order to improve our knowledge of the mechanism involved in the association of this species with the floating objects and to evaluate its potential impact in term of exploitation, targeted or not. This PhD thesis is composed of four chapters. Through an extensive analyze of the literature, the first chapter takes stock of the present knowledge on the FADs, on the aggregative behaviour of pelagic fish and on the dolphinfish. The second chapter deals specifically with the aggregative behaviour of the dolphinfish by the way of acoustic tagging of fish carry out during offshore campaigns around drifting FADs. The feeding habits of the dolphinfish around FADs are the main purpose of the third chapter. It is studied by the way of two complementary methods : stomach contains analysis of dolphinfish aggregated around several types of floating objects and underwater inventory of the marine fauna under these floating objects. Finally, the fourth and last chapter sums all the results and suggests a theory to explain the aggregative behaviour of the dolphinfish. We also try to estimate the possible consequences of this behaviour on the abundance and on the distribution of this species on a larger scale.