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First Workshop on Maritime Affairs in the
Adriatic Ionian Macro-Region Hellenic Ministry of
Foreign Affairs EC Maritime Affairs and
Fisheries Athens, 14th February 2012
Fisheries Management possibilities for National
fish stocks in the Mediterranean Dr. Manos
Koutrakis Dr. A. Kallianiotis Fisheries
Research Institute Kavala, Greece www.inale.gr
Hellenic Agricultural Organization
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Oceanographic characterisrics

• MED 2.5 million km2 ? 0.8 of the total marine
  area of the world
• Connection with
• Black Sea (Bosporus strait),
• Levantine basin (Crete, Karpathos, Rhodes),
• Central Mediterranean
• Two main types of water (cold Black Sea Water,
  Levantine Intermediate Water) .

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Mediterranean Characteristics

• Different fishing methods targeting the same
  species
• Shared fish stocks and overlapped activities with
  third countries
• Limited scientific information on fish stocks
• Remarkable recreational fishing activity (at
  least 10 of total landings)

• Many types of biotopes, limited in extension and
  with different characteristics
• Many commercial fish species with overlapped
  biological cycles
• Limited continental shelf
• Limited or non existed EEZ (Exclusive Economic
  Zone)
• Only Cyprus and Tunisia have an EEZ, while
  France, Spain, Malta and Croatia have declared
  different types of protection zones beyond their
  territorial waters (fishing protection zones,
  environmental protection zones)

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Mediterranean Fisheries Characteristics

• Large number of part time fishermen
• Low daily income for the majority of the boats
• Big number of ports and difficulties of control
  activities
• Commercial high priced species
• Coastal stocks still in good conditions

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Fishing Fleet Trawling

• The most active fishing method
• The most studied fishing gear
• The highest impact from all gears on the marine
  habitats
• Many targeted species in depths from 30- 450 m

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Fishing Fleet Surrounding nets

• Traditional method-purse seine, using lights.
• Mainly targeting small pelagic species with
  schooling behavior.
• Fishing during the night when schools are
  distributed near the sea surface for feeding.
• Pelagic fishing grounds in depths from 30-80 m.

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Fishing Fleet Small scale fishery

• Many types of fishing gears
• Most of them are selective
• Seasonally different targeted species
• Fishing grounds in depths lt50 m

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Mediterranean fisheries based on the analysis of
the FAO-Fishstat database
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Requirements for the management of fish stocks

• Environmental data v
• Species biology data v
• Fishing gear specifications v
• Legislationv
• Economical datav
• Social data v
• Holistic approach

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EU collection and management of the data / Common
Fisheries Policy

• COUNCIL REGULATION 1543/2000 of 29 June 2000
  Establishing a Community framework for the
  collection and management of the data needed to
  conduct the CFP.
• COMMISSION REGULATION 1639/2001 of 25 July 2001
  Establishing the Community programmes for the
  collection of data in the fisheries sector and
  laying down detailed rules for the application of
  the Regulation 1543/2000
• COMMISSION REGULATION 1581/2004 of 27 August
  2004 Amending Regulation 1639/2001.
• COUNCIL REGULATION 199/2008 of 25 February 2008
  Establishment of a Community framework for the
  collection, management and use of data in the
  fisheries sector and support for scientific
  advice regarding the CFP.

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EU collection and management of the data / Common
Fisheries Policy
Aims

• The Community must take part in the effort
  undertaken in International waters to conserve
  fishery resources.
• To conduct scientific evaluations needed for the
  Common Fishery Policy.
• Data must be collected on the biology of the fish
  stocks, on the fleets and their activities and on
  economic and social issues.
• To ensure the consistency of the system by
  creating a multiannual framework.

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EU collection and management of the data / Common
Fisheries Policy
Rules to apply

• EU STECF (Scientific, Technical Economic
  Committee on Fisheries) is responsible for the
  evaluation and progress of the national programs.
• The programs must be implemented under the direct
  responsibility of the member states.
• The programs require significant expenditure.
  Therefore, there is a community contribution to
  the member states (Minimum 50 - Extended 25).
• The aggregated data have to be fed into
  computerized databases.
• The conduct of the collection and the management
  programs should be regularly evaluated.

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Monitoring of fishing fleet

• Number of vessels
• Gross tonnage (GT)
• Engine power (Kw)
• Age of vessel
• Gear used
• Time spent at sea during the year

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Fishing effort

• Fuel consumption and fishing effort by type of
  technique
• Ports with significant landings
• Geographical desegregation
• Level of precision 10
• By vessel category
• By type of technique
• Coastal boats chosen between active vessels

Specific fishing effort

• Large pelagic species
• Collection of fishing effort data
• Processing and grouping of data per
• Category of vessel
• Fishing technique (métiers)
• Geographical area

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Catches and landings

• Landings of demersal and small pelagic species
• Assessment of overall production based on random
  observation of production per unit of effort

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Discard sampling

• Vessel categories
• Otter trawls,
• Purse seiners,
• Netters,
• long liners,
• large pelagic species fishing vessels
• Calculation of the length at which 50 of fish of
  a species are discarded
• Stratification over time
• Stratification over area
• Sampling on board

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Surveys of stocks-MEDITS

• Desegregation in different geographical areas
• Depth zones
• Biological parameters (length, weight, sex,
  maturity stage)
• Main targeted species
• Secondary species

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Biological sampling of landings

• Priority species
• Sampling of landing sites
• Age at length
• Length at first maturity
• Sex composition
• Maturity composition

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Economic data

• Desegregation by vessel types
• Total income
• Production cost
• Fixed cost
• Prices of fisheries products per tonne
• Employment rate
• Characteristics of fishing vessels

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Data Base

• Fishing capacity
• Fishing effort
• Catches and landings
• Biological sampling through experimental fishery
• Biological sampling of landings
• Fish processing

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Problems

• Overfishing
• Impact of fishing gears to the marine ecosystems
• Pollution
• Illegal unreported fishery
• Low level of fishermen organisation
• Conflicts between fisheries sectors
• Conflicts between fishermen from different
  countries (common stocks)
• Impact from marine mammals (locally)
• Non scientifically documented legislation and
  technical measures for the Mediterranean
  (national and EU).
• Low stock monitoring
• Scientific organisations and regional fisheries
  bodies for the monitoring of the Mediterranean
  fish stocks are limited

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Overfishing

• A FAO report (2005) named the Northeast Atlantic,
  and the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea as
  regions with stocks in greatest need of recovery.
  
• FAO's identified a number of Mediterranean stocks
  as overexploited, including bluefin tuna,
  Atlantic bonito, hake, swordfish, whiting,
  striped mullet and sea bream.
• Catches of many species peaked in the late 1980s
  and early 1990s, have declined since (e.g. hake
  peaked in 1990s at 52,000 t but dropped by half
  by 2002).
• The bluefin tuna was a major player in the
  Mediterranean fisheries for at least 2,500 years
  and today is overexploited. Catches peaked at
  39,000 t in 1994, but by 2002 dropped by nearly
  half to 22,000 t.
• The GFCM's work demonstrates that regional
  fisheries bodies can take on a key role in
  building sustainable fisheries, even in settings
  like the Mediterranean where joint governance is
  not always easy.

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Impact of fishing gears
Van Houtan Pauly, 2007. Snapshot Ghost of
destruction. Nature 447 123.
Scallop dredge
One of the key principles of ecosystem-based
fisheries management is the need to protect
ecosystems and populations by applying the
precautionary principle, which includes halting
destructive fishing methods (Chuenpagdee et al.,
2003, Front Ecol Environ, 1 517524).
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Illegal fishery

• Trawlers in some cases do not respect the
  distance form the shore or the depth zone, or the
  Posidonia beds.
• Purse seines in some cases touch the bottom with
  the net.
• Some small scale coastal boats do not respect the
  minimum mesh size, where is required. Few data on
  mesh selectivity.

• Council Regulation (EC) 1967/2006 lays down
  certain technical measures for the conservation
  of fisheries sources in the Mediterranean.
• Article 43.3 of this Regulation prohibits the use
  of bottom trawls, seines or similar nets above
  the Posidonia beds (Posidonia oceanica) or other
  marine phanerogams, which are listed as a
  priority habitat type under Annex I of the
  Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC)

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Unreported fishery

• The large number of landing ports and the spread
  of fishing boats in many bays and islands,
  create difficulties for the detection of landed
  quantities.
• There are few official landing ports and the
  existing legislation does not oblige all the
  fishermen to declare their catches.

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Impact from marine mammals

• 1-3 species involved
• Feeding on small scale fishermen nets reaches 48
  of the boats in the Gulf of Kavala
• 48.9 of the 635 dolphins found dead last decade
  were shot by fishermen.

Tursiops truncatus
Delphinus delphis
Stenella coeruleoalba
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New approaches to the management of fisheries in
the Mediterranean
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FAO Code of conduct for responsible fisheries

• Avoidance of changes that are potentially
  irreversible.
• If the results of the exploitation are uncertain,
  priority should be given to conserving the
  reproductive capacity of the resource.
• Harvesting capacity should be commensurate with
  the estimated sustainable level of the resource.
• All fishing activities must have prior
  authorization and be subject to periodic review.
• Establishment of institutional framework for
  fishery management.
• Establishment of minimum landing size at length
  at first maturity.
• Improvement of gear selectivity.
• Limitation of by-catches and discards.
• Average stock abundance relative to safety level.
• Avoidance of risk of declining recruitment.
• Large range of ages in the stock.
• Wide geographic range of the populations.

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FAO Code of conduct for responsible fisheries

• Precautionary management avoid some outcomes as
• Overexploitation of the resource
• Over development of harvesting capacity
• Loss of biodiversity
• Major physical disturbances of sensitive biotopes
• Major social or economic dislocations

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Key steps in promoting effective and accountable
fisheries management Cohrane, FAO, 2000, Fish
and Fisheries 3-21
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Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)

• MPAs are recognized by resource managers as a
  specialized and important tool, to generate
  downstream effects by enhancing the productivity
  of key species. The benefits created can
  potentially extend well beyond the boundary lines
  of MPAs.
• MPAs in the Mediterranean According to the
  Venice EC Ministerial declaration (2003) the
  creation of fisheries protection zones permits
  the improvement of conservation and control of
  fisheries and thus contributes to better resource
  management.
• The situation on MPAs in the Mediterranean is
  particularly complex because not all
  Mediterranean countries have ratified UNCLOS
  (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea)
  that establishes the 12 nm as national waters and
  200 nm continental shelf.

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Management plan for fishery sensitive areas

• Prohibition of fishery in the spawning and
  nursery grounds
• Guarantee of ecological or minimal flow of rivers
  in the regions with dams
• Ensure good water quality in the estuaries
• Monitoring of fishing activities and regulation
  on fished quantities

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Artisanal Fisheries in the Mediterranean

• The Mediterranean is a semi-static sea,
  characterized by a great variety of small sized
  and short living species but poor in fishery
  since it lacks large oceanic monospecific stocks
  (Farruggio,1989).
• The development of semi-industrial and industrial
  fishery, has led to an overexploitation of many
  fishable resources (Garcia Reveret,1989).
• The impoverishment of Mediterranean alieutic
  resources today imposes a reduction of fishing
  effort.
• The return to the alieutic exploitation of the
  coastal zone through the development of artisanal
  fishery, appears mandatory for Mediterranean
  fishery (Durand, Farruggio Lemoine, 1989).
• Artisanal fishery, even though it still
  represents the prevailing activity in many
  Mediterranean countries, has gone, in the past
  half century, towards an involution that has
  relegated it to a marginal role, from an economic
  and social point of view, creating an erosion of
  customs and traditions (Charbonnier Caddy,
  1986).
• The recovery of artisanal fishery requires the
  modernization of the productive apparatus by
  means of the reconstruction of human and physical
  capital, currently subject to its rapid ageing
  process.

Andaloro F., Baro J., Coppola S.R., Koutrakis,
E.T, Intern. Conf. on Mediterranean Fisheries,
Naples, June 21-22, 2002
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Co-management The use of co-management and the
devolution of fishery management functions to
right-holder associations

• European waters have a very long history of local
  management.
• COLLET (1999), points to continuum of a local
  management system in the Mediterranean based on
  the recognition of fishing territories and access
  regulation from the 3rd millennium BC (temple
  culture) down through the centuries via the
  medieval guilds and brotherhoods (Prudhomie in
  France Confradias in Spain) to modern times.
• This tradition of local territorially-based
  management shows that the common pool resources
  of the seas were benefit of appropriate and
  effective management.
• Many developing countries use Territorial User
  Rights (TURFs) where you allocate communities
  shares of the coastline, which provides
  incentives to manage stocks in a sustainable way.
  

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Is the management of fishing resources feasible ?

• v Yes, if we rate our objectives
• v Yes, if we adapt the measures to the
  characteristics of each region
• v Yes, if the fishermen cooperate with the rest
  of interested parties
• v Yes, if we create a new mechanism for the
  application of management measures
• v Yes, if we continue collecting and analyzing
  the essential data needed for the monitoring of
  the resources

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Thank you!