NEMO PROJECT SCIENTIFIC MONITORING PLAN Institute of oceanography and fisheries, SPLIT FANO Laboratory of Marine Biology and Fisheries
INTRODUCTION The objective of the Integrated Maritime approach call launched in October 2013 by the Med Programme is to establish a new relevant partnership that will contribute to implement the Med Cooperation Programme 2014 2020 and thus to build a valuable bridge between the two programming periods. In coherence with the Blue Growth perspective promoted by the European Union and with the potential for development that marine and maritime economic activities in the Mediterranean can offer, the Med Program organized this last call into four priority axes: Maritime innovation and Economic Development Priority 1 Environment Protection Priority 2 Transport and Accessibility Priority 3 Governance and policy response Priority 4 To fulfill these expectations, 14 projects were approved in April 2014 and sorted by priority axis so they could contribute to establishing a comprehensive state of the art (through different tools such as gap analyses, maps and studies) for the whole programme area and sub regions (e.g. the Adriatic Ionian Macro Region). In December 2012, the European Union mandated the European Commission to prepare an Action Plan for the so called European Strategy for Adriatic Ionian Region (EUSAIR). The strategy covers 8 countries (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia), 4 of which are EU Member States.
Figure 1. EUSAIR area Chart 1. Number of projects by country (2007 2013)
PROPOSALS FOR IMPROVE FUTURE MONITORING REGARDING G FISHERIESS RELATED TOURISM As the fisheries related tourism t takes place through commercial and non commercial fishing, monitoring of the state of exploited resources and the ecosystem, in whichh fishing takes place, must be carried out differently in different types of fisheries. Proposals for the future monitoring of the fisheries related tourism are following: Monitoring of fishing effort Numbers involved of in fisherman fisheriess related tourism Number participating Days at sea of vessel Type and construction characteristic of the used fishing gear Fisheries regulation and protection measures Collection socioeconomical off data through questionnaire Monitoring of total catch Total catchonthe vessel duringthetrip Quantitative structure of the catch Qualitative structure of the catch Demographic structure of commercially most important population Monitoring of state of resources and ecosystem Recentt status of themost important species in the catchess (including impact of different types of fisheries and different fishing gear) Recentt status of the ecosystem in which fisheries occured Monitoring of the commercial fisheryy is already covered byy DCF in thee EU countries, and by national monitoring in other countries. However, there is no specific monitoring on the positive and negative effectss of the fisheries related tourismm with respect to commercial fishing. It is necessary to conduct pilot studies on the effects of o fisheries comparison with commercial fisheries, primarily in relation to: related tourism in
Reduction of fishing effort Reducing of catch Increase selectivity of fishing gears Reducing fuel consumption Economic effects Sociological effects Diversification of the touristic offer Raising awareness of the importance of biodiversity Raising awareness about the importance of environmental protectionn For the purpose of collection of this information, it would be of great importance to make a preliminary study thatt would give answers to these questions, andd that would give a detailedd monitoring plan of this type of fishing in the future. Monitoring fisheries related tourism that takes place through non commercial because of the fact f that fishing (sports and recreation) is much more complex problem. Especially this type of fisheries in different countries is regulated differently. As a rule in any of the countriess of the Adriatic and Ionian there is no systematic monitoring of this type of fishing. f Somewhat better situation is only for monitoring of catches in sport fishing during official sport competitions, mostly in the category of big game fisheries. In this category are total catch and catch generally classified by type of fish
recorded, as well as catch by the participants in the fishery. For other types of noncommercial fishing, as a rule, there are only data on the issuing of licenses for fishing, which in some case may be a rough measure of fishing effort. However, here is also important to separate the part of the fishing effort which comes from the local population, from the one which is performed by tourists. The problem can be resolved in a way that administration forward a questionnaire (when issuing permits, for non commercial fisheries) in order to collect data of catch and fishing effort. As the permit can be also purchased electronically, the records of data in such cases may be done in the electronic format.