Spatial planning for fisheries in the Northern Adriatic: working toward viable and sustainable fishing

Abstract

Abstract. Given the great overfishing of the demersal resources in the Northern Adriatic Sea (geographical sub-area [GSA] 17), along with the fishing pressure in marine habitats, evidence strongly supports the need to evaluate appropriate management approaches. Several fishing activities operate simultaneously in the area, and the need to minimize conflicts among them is also a social concern. We applied a spatially and temporally explicit fish and fisheries model to assess the impact of a suite of spatial plans suggested by practitioners that could reduce the pressure on the four demersal stocks of high commercial interest in the GSA 17 and that could promote space sharing between mutually exclusive activities. We found that excluding trawlers from some areas has lowered the effective fishing effort, resulting in some economic losses but providing benefit to the set netters. Not every simulated fishing vessel is impacted in the same way because some fishing communities experienced different economic opportunities, particularly when a 6-nautical mile buffer zone from the coast was implemented in the vicinity of important fishing grounds. Along this buffer zone, the four stocks were only slightly benefiting from the protection of the area and from fewer discards. In contrast, assuming a change in the ability of the population to disperse led to a large effect: Some fish became accessible in the coastal waters, therefore increasing the landings for rangelimited fishers, but the discard rate of fish also increased, greatly impairing the long-term biomass levels. Our evaluation, however, confirmed that no effort is displaced onto vulnerable benthic habitats and to grounds not suitable for the continued operation of fishing. We conclude that the tested spatial management is helpful, but not sufficient to ensure sustainable fishing in the area, and therefore, additional management measures should be taken. Our test platform investigates the interaction between fish and fisheries at a fine geographical scale and simulates data for varying fishing methods and from different harbor communities in a unified framework. We contribute to the development of effective science-based inputs to facilitate policy improvement and better governance while evaluating trade-offs in fisheries management and marine spatial planning.

Seasonal dynamics of small-scale fisheries in the Adriatic Sea

“…Small-scale fishing fleets account for more than 80% of fleets in the world, in Europe, and in the Mediterranean (European Commission, 2002;Guyader et al, 2007). In the Adriatic Sea, most SSFs exploit areas that can be reached in a few hours from the home harbor (Bastardie et al, 2017). Adriatic SSFs are active full-or parttime throughout the year and use a wide range of fishing strategies that can be described in terms of target species, fishing gear, fishing grounds, and métiers.…”

Addressing cumulative effects, maritime conflicts and ecosystem services threats through MSP-oriented geospatial webtools

“…6d and 9b). The Northern Adriatic Sea is one of the most intensively fished area in Europe, where most of the harvested stocks are overexploited, especially in the western sector, due to intense non-selective fishing activities from Italian fleets exerted on fish habitats (Colloca et al, 2013;Russo et al, 2015, Bastardie et al, 2017.…”

“…Finally, the presented webtools are part of a wider ecosystem of analytical techniques supporting MSP. In fact CEA, MUC and MES-Threat can be combined with each other ensuring a multi-functional approach or can play a complementary role in support of tool functionalities, such as Displace for use specific investigations (Bastardie et al, 2017), Marxan with Zones for scenario development (Ban et al, 2013) or Seasketch (2018) for incorporating participatory stakeholder engagement into spatial modelling.…”

The Saga of the Management of Fisheries in the Adriatic Sea: History, Flaws, Difficulties, and Successes toward the Application of the Common Fisheries Policy in the Mediterranean

“…Within the area, the Adriatic Sea (Figure 1) represents the perfect case study on several aspects of fishery management: a great variety of fisheries, the richness and diversity of species caught and the relative high productivity-especially in the Northern area-(Fonda-Umani et al, 1992), a difficult management due to shared resources (Bastardie et al, 2017), the long history and the long time-series of data and finally its relative isolation from the rest of the Mediterranean.…”