Larval dispersal of pearl oysters Pinctada margaritifera in the Gambier Islands (French Polynesia) and exploring options for adult restocking using in situ data and numerical modelling.

Black pearl farming is the second source of French Polynesia income after tourism, and Gambier Islands are the main farming sites. Gambier main lagoon contains several sub-lagoons critical for pearl oyster rearing and spat collecting (SC). The Rikitea lagoon, traditionally had good SC rates in the warm season which ensured steady supplies of oysters for black pearl production.

A multivariate approach to synthetize large amount of connectivity matrices for management decisions: Application to oyster population restocking in the pearl farming context of Tuamotu Archipelago semi-closed atolls.

In applied ecology, numerical biophysical modelling allows running numerous simulations of spatial connectivity between source and destination locations. To characterize population connectivity, larval dispersal and resulting connectivity matrices can be computed for various forcing conditions of wind, density of spawners, or pelagic larval durations. Here, we investigate a methodology to synthetize meaningfully all numerical experiments performed for three atoll lagoons in the Tuamotu Archipelago pearl farming context.