A detailed picture of fisheries issue, within the context of the Mediterranean
Sea, in order to investigate possible challenges and opportunities in the framework of
the reformed Common Fishery Policy (CFP) is presented as invited speech. The
Mediterranean Sea has lots of diverse benthic communities in the coastal area that
imply high number of species and complex trophic relationships. Since ancient times
fisheries were very important on the Mediterranean, and nowadays it’s even more
crucial due growing human population. A majoritie of fisheries in that coasta, shallow
area is small-scale, characterized by multi-purpose and multi-gear fleet operating on
seasonal basi, with multi-species catches and extremely heterogeneous landing places
and marketing. Thus, scientific research of small-scaled fisheries is a particularly
complex. Moreover, the facts regarding serious overfishing of most Mediterranean
stocks demands urgent reforms of the management measures aiming to guarantee the
sustainability of resources, particularly in comparison with the improvement observed
in NW Atlantic seas. According to the new, reformed CFP, all European fish stocks
should be brought to a state where they can produce at maximum sustainable yield
(MSY) by 2020 at the latest. The sustainable exploitation should be achieved through
multiannual plans (MAPs) reflecting regionality and the specificities of different
fisheries as it is established as new CFP objective. Creation of MAPs should be based
on scientific, technical and economic advices with included conservation measures for
restoring and maintaining Mediterranean fish stocks above the determined MSYs.
Since, in mixed Mediterranean fisheries, small-scale fishers landed more than a
hundred commercial species and each one has specific MSYs, it is extremely difficult
to regulate the fishing mortality independently for each species. Moreover, population
dynamics of all Mediterranean species is also influenced by the recent environmental
and oceanographic changes provoked by global climate change impacts. To really
improve state of Mediterranean resources and maintain fisheries as economic activity,
many different contrasting socioeconomic and ecological interests need to be
confronted. Further on, recent demands for drastic reductions of fishing effort and
consequently reduction of landings, based on new CFP objectives, requests for socially
unacceptable management measures. For sure, actively involving scientists, fisherman
and policy makers in fisheries management can minimize those tensions.
Keywords: Fisheries, Mediterranean Sea, Reformed Common Fisheries Policy.
