Report | November 30, 2020
Habitat protection under the Mediterranean Sea Regulation: A missed opportunity?
The unrelenting overfishing and degradation of Mediterranean marine ecosystems over the last 15 years offer grounds for questioning the implementation of European Union (EU) policy responses. Not only it is the most overfished sea in the world, with 80% of its fish stocks overexploited, but the region’s unique marine biodiversity faces
increasing threats, including from climate change and invasive species, up to a point where the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that 20% of all Mediterranean habitats and species are threatened with extinction. This report explores to what extent the EU Mediterranean Sea Regulation 1967/20061 has delivered, or not, on the protection of sensitive marine habitats and nursery areas as well as on the regulation of destructive fishing gear in Mediterranean fisheries. In the first part of the report, we analyse information detailing habitat protection efforts (or a lack thereof) by EU Member States since 2007.
All countries have generally adopted rules restricting bottom fishing in coastal waters in their national management plans, however this is undermined by too many derogations. As a result, we found that the most coastal of marine habitats, Posidonia beds, were generally better protected than coralligenous and maërl beds,
which have been insufficiently mapped and protected in most Member States. Most countries have failed to designate specific Fisheries Protected Areas (FPA) to conserve fish stocks and sensitive habitats and instead reported areas that lacked scientific justification and were irrelevant to the objectives of the Mediterranean Regulation. In fact, most areas pre-dated this law or were already established for other purposes. Spain and Malta stand out due to exemplary efforts and approaches to protecting sensitive habitats.
