Defend as You Can, React Quickly: The Effects of the COVID-19 Shock on a Large Fishery of the Mediterranean Sea

This paper presents an analysis of the effect of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic and related restrictive measures on the activity of the Italian fleet of trawlers, which represents one of the most important fisheries in the Mediterranean Sea. We integrated multiple sources of information including: (1) Fleet activity data from Vessel Monitoring System, the most important satellite-based tracking device; (2) vessel-specific landing data disaggregated by species; (3) market and economic drivers affecting the effort variation during the lockdown and in the related fishing strategies; (4) monthly landings of demersal species in the main Italian harbors. These data sources are combined to: (1) Assess the absolute and relative changes of trawling effort in the geographical sub- areas surrounding the Italian coasts; (2) integrate and compare these changes with the market and economic drivers in order to explain the observed changes in fishing effort and strategy; (3) analyze the changes of the fishing effort on the Landing-per-unit- effort (LPUE) in order to further understand the strategy adopted by fishers during this crisis and to infer the potential consequence for the different stocks. The results provide an overview of the effects of the “COVID-19 shock,” in terms of fishing activity and socio-economic drivers, demonstrating that the consequences of the pandemic have been very varied. Although the COVID-19 shock has caused a marked overall reduction in activity in the first semester of 2020, in some cases the strategies adopted by fishermen and the commercial network linked to their activity have significantly reduced the impact of the emergency and taken back catch and effort to levels similar to those of previous years. These results could provide insights for management measures based on temporal stops of fishing activities. In particular, if no limits to the fishing effort after the restart of fishing activities are adopted, the benefits of fishing pressure reduction on fishery resources could be nullified. On the other hands, when fishing activities restart, and in the absence of catch control, effort tends to increase on coastal bottoms characterized by greater abundance of resources and longer effective fishing time

Trends in Effort and Yield of Trawl Fisheries: A Case Study From the Mediterranean Sea

The rationale applied for monitoring and managing fisheries is based on the implicit assumption that yield and stocks status is essentially determined by fisheries. Moreover, the fisheries yield is quantified and analyzed in terms of landings with respect to official management area of registration of vessels. In this way, the real area of activity of each fleet is not considered and this prevent an effective spatial analysis of the factors affecting fisheries yield and stocks status. This paper firstly presents a VMS-based reconstruction of the fishing effort and of the area of activity of the Italian trawlers in the Mediterranean Sea. The fishing area of each fleet is then used as a spatial reference to estimate primary productivity rate and gross primary production and to investigate, by using General Additive Models, the effects of trawling effort, primary production and time on fisheries yield, fisheries productivity and overexploitation rate for some key demersal species. The results evidence that the usage of satellite-based information of fishing activities and of primary production, when combined at the real spatial scale of fishing activities, could effectively improve our ability to analyze the response of the ecosystems to these driving forces and allow capturing the main trends of yield, productivity and overexploitation rate of demersal stocks

Report on the STECF Expert Working Group 17-12 Fisheries Dependent Information: ‘New-FDI’

The STECF expert working group (EWG) on Fisheries Dependant Information (FDI) took place in JRC, Ispra from 23 to 27 October 2017 to review the data transmitted by Member States under a new data call (‘New-FDI’). The new data call specification was designed with three broad aims in mind i) Compatibility between the New-FDI data and the data held in the Fleet Economic database. ii) Ability to encompass all EU registered vessels including those from the Mediterranean, Black Sea and external waters fleets. iii) Ability to assess effects of management measures. The main purpose of the EWG was to judge if the call specification was appropriate to accomplish the above aims and to consider any difficulties encountered by member states in fulfilling the data call. Two terms of reference also allowed trial analyses to be conducted of a type relevant to the third broad aim. The EWG addressed all Terms of Reference during the meeting and drew conclusions on the modifications required for the New-FDI data call going forwards. Prior to the EWG it had been agreed by STECF Bureau that the report of the meeting would not be presented to STECF for approval as an STECF report but published separately (as a JRC technical report). This report therefore presents the data, methods observations and findings of an EWG of the STECF but the findings presented in this report do not necessarily constitute the opinion of the STECF or reflect the views of the European Commission and in no way anticipate the Commission’s future policy in this area.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

Report on the Workshop on Transversal Variables. (Linking economic and biological effort data (call) design). 19th -23rd January 2015

The Workshop on the Transversal Variables took place in Zagreb from the 19th to 23rd of January, 2015 mainly to tackle the issues related to the increasing need of having fisheries fleet economic data and fisheries biologic data on a level of disaggregation that would allow a proper interoperability between datasets to underpin bioeconomic modelling. For that, several analyses were carried out and conclusions taken. These analyses were : 1. comparison of economic and biological effort data calls both with respect to their level of resolution and the landings and effort values obtained from equivalent aggregations was performed. This was compared to what would be needed in order to undertake bioeconomic modelling for a chosen management plan. 2. The description of how MS are calculating effort variables and a proposal on the way forward to harmonize approaches, 3. Conclusions on how to harmonize levels of resolution, the variable definitions and the codification in use amongst data calls, in order to make them comparable and based on coherent standard codifications.JRC.G.3-Maritime affair

Energy audit and carbon footprint in trawl fisheries

Measurement(s) vessel speed • latitude • longitude • fuel consumption • shaft rotational speed • shaft torque • fishing gear drag  Technology Type(s) GPS navigation system • mass and volumetric flow meter • shaft power measurement system with optical sensor and strain gauge Factor Type(s) fuel usage • greenhouse gas emissions Sample Characteristic - Environment greenhouse gas • fossil fuel Sample Characteristic - Location Mediterranean Se

Benthic-pelagic coupling mediates interactions in Mediterranean mixed fisheries: An ecosystem modeling approach.

Benthic-pelagic coupling plays a pivotal role in aquatic ecosystems but the effects of fishery driven interactions on its functioning has been largely overlooked. Disentangling the benthic-pelagic links including effects of mixed fisheries, however, needs sketching a whole description of ecosystem interactions using quantitative tools. A holistic food web model has been here developed in order to understand the interplay between the benthic-pelagic coupling and mixed fisheries in a Mediterranean system such as the Strait of Sicily. The reconstruction of the food web required review and integration of a vast set of local and regional biological information from bacteria to large pelagic species that were aggregated into 72 functional groups. Fisheries were described by 18 fleet segments resulting from combination of fishing gears and fishing vessel size. The input-output analysis on the food web of energy pathways allowed identifying effects of biological and fishery components. Results showed that the structure of the Strait of Sicily food web is complex. Similarly to other Mediterranean areas, the food web of the Strait of Sicily encompasses 4.5 trophic levels (TLs) with the highest TLs reached by bluefin tuna, swordfish and large hake and largely impacted by bottom trawling and large longline. Importantly, benthic-pelagic coupling is affected by direct and indirect impacts among groups of species, fleets and fleets-species through the whole trophic spectrum of the food web. Moreover, functional groups able to move on large spatial scales or life history of which is spent between shelf and slope domains play a key role in linking subsystems together and mediate interactions in the Mediterranean mixed fisheries