Report | June 2, 2021
Transparency and compliance weaknesses in GFCM Fisheries Restricted Areas
Monitoring, control, and surveillance (MCS) are crucial to ensuring proper fisheries management and rebuilding stocks, particularly in the Mediterranean Sea, where 75% of stocks are considered overfished.1 The General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean and Black Sea (GFCM) has taken significant steps in recent years to improve MCS of the fisheries in its area of competence, through various binding decisions that strengthen the compliance framework of fisheries management. Steps taken include the adoption of a Regional Plan of Action (RPoA) to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, as well as a mid-term strategy (2017–2020) towards the sustainability of Mediterranean and Black Sea fisheries,2 which includes specific actions and targets on IUU fishing.
Spatial fisheries closures – also called Fisheries Restricted Areas (FRAs) – are one of the most effective measures adopted by the GFCM to protect essential habitats for fish stocks in sensitive areas or unique deep-sea ecosystems. Nevertheless, IUU fishing cases have been reported within these areas, and related MCS efforts have been inconsistent and uneven.
In 2016, the GFCM adopted three FRAs in the Strait of Sicily,3 protecting nursery grounds for hake and shrimp for the first time. These three FRAs are the main focus of this report, which presents an analysis by Oceana of potentially illegal fishing by bottom otter trawl vessels inside FRA boundaries, based on publicly available satellite data accessed through the Global Fishing Watch website.4
Oceana detected over 126 hours of apparent5 illegal fishing activity that took place between the beginning of July 2019 and the end of December 2020.
