Fish stock assessments in the Mediterranean: state of the art

By J. Lleonart, F. Maynou. 2003

374 citations recorded by the source corpus.

SUMMARY: The Mediterranean fisheries are characterised by fragmented fleets, usually composed by relatively small vessels, use of a large number of landing sites, multi-species catches and low CPUEs. Fish are commercialised mainly fresh and the prices are relatively high. These factors make it difficult and expensive to get extensive and reliable data time series and to get biological samples. Most of the fish caught in the Mediterranean are the recruits (0-1 year old) of the main target species. Since the recruitment is much more uncertain than the abundance of the adult stages, the assessments are also more uncertain. Furthermore, no TAC or adaptive management is in place, so the administrations do not require monitoring in order to manage the fisheries. The continental shelf is narrow (with some exceptions) and there are few stocks shared between two or more countries. Consequently, the international management structures have not been sufficiently enforced, and until recently no regular assessments were made by international working groups. These characteristics have led to a situation in which most of the assessments have been done in the framework of scientific projects, and therefore do not have continuity in time. The results of these assessments have rarely been incorporated in management.

Subfields: Aquatic Science, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7796a9646882a65370f9771dc0d81b274512fbfd

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Citations in the corpus

Larval migration of the zoonotic parasite Anisakis pegreffii (Nematoda: Anisakidae) in European anchovy, Engraulis encrasicolus: Implications to seafood safety (2016, background): “In Italy, E. encrasicolus is the most fished species by weight (25% of the total catches) and the second one by value (Lleonart, 2005; Lleonart & Maynou, 2003).”
Sea warming and fish distribution: the case of the small pelagic fish, Sardinella aurita, in the western Mediterranean (2006, background): “Although recruitment overfishing has been reported in the case of anchovy (Lleonart & Maynou, 2003) environmental conditions (e.g. river run-off, wind mixing or temperature) might have played a role in these decreases (Lloret et al., 2001, 2004; Martı́n & Sabatés, 2004).”
A comparison of anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) and sardine (Sardina pilchardus) larvae feeding in the Northwest Mediterranean: influence of prey availability and ontogeny (2010, background): “In anchovy, this value was similar to that previously reported in the Northwest Mediterranean (Tudela et al., 2002).”
Synergistic effects of fishing-induced demographic changes and climate variation on fish population dynamics (2011, methodology): “2a) was obtained from population models for the assessment of the species in the Balearic Islands region (FAO-GFCM 2008), which showed the intensive exploitation of juvenile EH characteristic of Mediterranean demersal populations (Caddy 1993, Lleonart & Maynou 2003).”
Stock identity of horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus) in the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea : Integrating the results from different stock identification approaches (2008, background): “In the Mediterranean area the information on stock structrure is very scarce (Lleonart and Maynou, 2003), although general fishery statistics already exist (Fiorentini et al.”
Demersal resource assemblages in the trawl fishing grounds off the Balearic Islands (western Mediterranean) (2005, background): “These assessments consider the single species as the basic unit of the analysis, which has been considered as incomplete for multi-species fisheries such as the Mediterranean bottom trawl (Caddy, 1993; Lleonart and Maynou, 2003).”