Mediterranean Sea

3
Oct
2023

MedFish4Ever Summit: NGOs Call on Fisheries Ministers to Take Action to End Illegal Bottom Trawling in Mediterranean

Ending illegal bottom trawling in the Mediterranean Sea: A Call to Action for the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean

Ministers Meeting for MedFish4Ever High Level Conference on Mediterranean Protection in Malta

MedFish4Ever NGO Side Event to Present Findings – See Below

As fisheries ministers gather in Malta today for the high-level MedFish4Ever conference, NGOs called on them to end the illegal bottom trawling that is driving destruction of protected areas in the Mediterranean, by strengthening compliance and enforcement ahead of November’s General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) annual session in Croatia [1,2]. 

Continue reading MedFish4Ever Summit: NGOs Call on Fisheries Ministers to Take Action to End Illegal Bottom Trawling in Mediterranean

1
Nov
2022

New Data Reveals Bottom Trawling in Protected Areas Greater Transparency Needed to Stop Illegal Fishing in the Mediterranean

2 November 2022: Members of the Med Sea Alliance, a diverse coalition of NGOs, today launched a new data atlas which, for the first-time, maps areas permanently closed to bottom trawling across the Mediterranean and investigates illegal trawling in these areas.

The Atlas is an online tool that maps presumed and confirmed infringements of bottom trawling in areas where it is permanently banned to protect sensitive habitats and depleted fish stocks. The Atlas has been released ahead of the 45th meeting of the GFCM*, the fisheries management body responsible for the Mediterranean. During the period of January 2020 – December 2021, the Atlas recorded incidents of possible bottom trawling in 35 closed areas by 305 different apparent vessels across 9518 apparent days of fishing activity (based on Global Fishing Watch data¹) and 169 cases of confirmed infractions between 2018 and 2020, based on MedReAct research on media outlets and information released by national control authorities.

Continue reading New Data Reveals Bottom Trawling in Protected Areas Greater Transparency Needed to Stop Illegal Fishing in the Mediterranean

17
Jun
2022

WTO Members Fail Again to Stop Subsidized Overfishing

This week, ministers from all 164 member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) failed once again to curb harmful fisheries subsidies that lead to overfishing at the 12th Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. While Oceana says that eliminating harmful subsidies is the greatest single action that can be taken to protect the world’s oceans, the WTO has continually failed to reach a meaningful agreement since initially taking up the issue at the 2001 Doha Ministerial Conference. Since then, governments have spent over USD $400 billion globally on harmful fisheries subsidies, according to Oceana estimates.

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3
Feb
2022

The EU and its Member States must fulfil their commitment to stop public money from supporting wasteful economic activities that degrade our environment. We urge EU leaders to stop subsidizing fossil fuels.

Despite the adoption of the Sustainable Development Agenda and the Paris Agreement, EU governments continue to provide billions of fossil fuels subsidies that degrade our environment and contribute to the climate crisis. The fact that there is no single commonly accepted definition of fossil fuel subsidies further creates lack of accountability and transparency in reporting.

Lower taxes or full tax exemptions are allowed for commercial fuel in the aviation, transport, fisheries, energy generation and maritime sectors, and for the production and extraction of coal, gas and oil.

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2
Feb
2022

Local fishers experience can contribute to a better knowledge of marine resources

Overall, our study evidences that fisher’s perception represents an important source of complementary information to describe bottom trawling fisheries characteristics and the long-term changes of demersal target species in the Western Mediterranean Sea.Our results document important changes in the bottom trawling activity in the study area and in the abundance of commercial species with time according to fishers’ perceptions. Our results mostly match quantitative information from national statistics and stock assessment analyses. 

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10
Jan
2022

Stranding of three striped dolphins in the NE Aegean

Three dead striped dolphins, two adult females and a juvenile male, were found off the southeast coast of Samos island. It is estimated that the strong winds carried them there from another part of the Aegean, after they had been drifting for at least three days. The Stranding Response team of the Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation arrived on site to investigate the causes of their death.

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15
Dec
2021

Spain falls short in protecting Mediterranean marine ecosystems

15th December  – Yesterday, Spain introduced new temporary and permanent fishing closures within the framework of the Multiannual Management Plan for Demersal Fisheries in the Mediterranean, to contribute to the recovery of the main demersal fish stocks.However, according to Fundación ENT and MedReAct, the new closures are insufficient and must be urgently strengthened. Spain must instead promote the establishment of larger areas permanently closed to fishing and located in sites with greater ecological value.

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4
Dec
2021

France, Spain and Italy must stop playing Russian roulette with their Mediterranean fisheries, and instead abide by EU law they committed to

 “In 2019, Spain, France and Italy committed to deliver sustainable fisheries in the Western Mediterranean by 2025, delaying by five years the sustainability obligation set by the CFP for 2020. Today, scientists are raising the alarm: none of the 2022 management scenarios evaluated will end overfishing by 2025 unless those same countries adopt drastic reductions in fishing effort. To prevent France, Italy and Spain from continuing to jeopardize the future of Mediterranean fisheries and the thousands of EU citizens that rely on it for their livelihoods, we call on the European Commission to act with emergency measures, before it’s too late”.

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