Pescatourism—A European review and perspective

Abstract

Abstract. Pescatourism is a relatively new concept of merging tourism with fi sheries. Its intention is to supplement incomes of fi shermen and their families in the situation of declining living resources of the sea and to provide an attractive activity for tourists visiting the sea coast. Pescatourism should be considered different activity from fi sheries tourism, or recreational fi shing (including charter fi shing), which usually denote angling. It also contributes to the education of the society and public awareness about the state and problems of the marine sector, including ecosystems, and experiencing the traditional fi shing culture. This new activity fi rst stared in Italy in 1982 and soon spread to other Mediterranean countries. Pescatourism can be considered a branch of sustainable tourism and an activity parallel to agrotourism. This essay provides an overview of pescatourism (and related activities) in European countries (Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Germany) with additional examples from elsewhere. Chances for implementing pescatourism in other countries are analysed (Turkey, Algeria, Poland). Despite all these positive features, it can easily be a commercial activity which does not provide any benefi ts to fi shers and sustainability of marine living resources if the licence right is given to charter operators rather than to fi shers.

Determining potential conflicts between small-scale fisheries and sea-cage fish farms in the Aegean Sea

“…Furthermore, the pescatourism might be an extra income for SSF in Turkey. Piasecki et al (2016) stated that the pescatourism activity can bring about various profits to the coastal (fisheries) communities, local authorities and self-governments, and obviously tourists. However, the current regulations do not permit any non-professional visitors on board of fisheries vessels.…”

Fisheries Sustainability through Soft Multi-Use Maritime Spatial Planning and Local Development Co-Management: Potentials and Challenges in Greece

“…"Pescatourism" has a rather long history with the term appearing in Italy in 1992 and originally used in the Italian legislation to denote the boarding of non-fishermen adults, aged over 14, on fishing boats with a recreational or tourism commitment [23]. Prosperi et al [24], define it as "the activity of a fisherman, a fishing company or a fishing cooperative aiming at transporting non-crew members, such as tourists, and conducting recreational activities" [24].…”

“…Moreover, they may expand the additional income sources by offering hospitality services to the tourists desiring to spend one or more days at the fisherman's residence and participate in their everyday routine (housework, preparation of the fishery products for trading, preparation of the fishing gear, such as nets, baits, etc.). This is a type of tourism service already offered in the Italian coastal areas, referred to as itti-tourism (itti-tourismo) [23]. The advantages of pescatourism for the fishing income also include the expected increase in local demand for locally caught fish, which are sold to the retail market, restaurants, etc.…”

Toward a Common Understanding of Ocean Multi-Use

“…One example is the mussel aquaculture in between offshore wind turbines in the North Sea as examined in the framework of the MERMAID project (He et al, 2014;Röckmann et al, 2015). Other examples include: touristic visits of OWFs in the North Sea (e.g., United Kingdom, Germany), combinations of tourism and aquaculture as exist in Malta, Greece, and Italy (Castellani et al, 2017); pesca-tourism, the combination of small scale fisheries with touristic offers, across the Mediterranean (Piasecki et al, 2016). This Type 2 multiuse can create a number of benefits.…”

“…These include for instance multi-use combinations of marine wind and wave energy generation (Perez-Collazo et al, 2015) offshore wind farms (OWF) coexisting with or actively supporting marine conservation (Lacroix and Pioch, 2011;Kyriazi et al, 2015Kyriazi et al, , 2016 or local fisheries branching out into tourism, creating so called "pescatourism" (Piasecki et al, 2016) to name just a small selection of possible combinations. Recently, research has started to focus more on the interactions of marine sectors and their management (Klinger et al, 2018).…”