for at least the main sole producers, the sole gillnetters. The sole
fishery in the Bay of Biscay is commercially exploited by trawlers and gill-netter fleets belonging to one of the nine POs located on the French Atlantic Coast. The 9 POs located on the Atlantic Coast manage 60% of the domestic sole landings. The other major contribution for this species comes from the Eastern Channel fisheries. The interviews highlighted a generalization of the sole sub-quotas’ individual management. This situation results from a stronger or tighter constraint due to the lack of resource availability. Six of the nine POs involved in the sole
fishery management implemented landings limits per vessel in 2012. However, an individual management system is seldom generalised for all vessels within a PO, but rather is established according to fishing activities or “metiers” (fish-gear associated to
target species and fishing grounds) and/or vessel lengths. POs primarily apply individual limits to the larger sole producers, usually the largest sole gillnetters. This system is very limited for some POs owing to the absence of a global monitoring system. For example, the smallest producers for which sole is a by-catch are not concerned with individual limits but receive a global allocation. The criteria adopted for sole sub-quota management vary between POs. A few of them determine limits in proportion to the reference track records (2001–2003 production average); some POs allocate quotas according to more recent track record keys, and other POs use maximal production over the last 10 years or a fixed package.