Special Issue: The Mediterranean. Managing Mediterranean fisheries

In the European Union alone, the Mediterranean fisheries sector provides a living for more than 90 000 fishermen working on more than 40 000 vessels. But fishing in the Mediterranean is not just an economic activity. It is part of the area's culture and way of life. Whole regions have been built and developed on fishing activities.

In the Mediterranean, more than anywhere else, the sector presents specific characteristics that call for tailor-made actions. First of all, the Mediterranean is a semi-closed sea. Due to its narrow continental shelf, a large portion of the fishing activity takes place near the shore. Other distinguishing features include the presence of shared, overlapping, and highly migratory fish stocks, the fragmented nature of scientific data, the importance of recreational fisheries and above all the practice of multispecies fishing.

With the adoption of its regulation on the Mediterranean in November 2006, the European Union aimed to set in place an effective policy for the management of Mediterranean fish resources. It was not easy to get the regulation adopted. Although everyone agreed on the need for effective measures to protect fish stocks and marine ecosystems, as well as a management framework suited to Mediterranean fisheries, a fair balance had to be struck between the need for more uniform measures and that of guaranteeing the flexibility required to best support the specific features of the fisheries concerned.

Today, the dynamic is in place, not only for the measures taken by the European Union, but more broadly for all the countries concerned, which are represented in the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM). Indeed, the solutions to meet the challenge of sustainable Mediterranean fisheries only make sense if they are applied by all the Mediterranean rim countries.

Vigilance and monitoring remain essential: there are too many exceptions to the rules. For example, although drifting gillnets have been banned since 2002 they are still being used. If care is not taken, and if such violations go unpunished, the measures could well be rendered ineffective.

The members of the GFCM are working in the same direction. Real progress has been made on controls, closer collaboration for the collection of reliable data, the adoption of technical measures to improve selectivity and the creation of conditions for sustainable aquaculture. The aim is to guarantee sustainable Mediterranean fisheries, enable coastal communities to maintain a fishing activity and preserve the ancestral heritage of this activity for future generations.