ENHANCING BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION

Two decades ago, the GFCM established the first fisheries restricted area (FRA) in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in support of fisheries management. In spring 2025, the eleventh FRA will enter into force.

While marine protected areas (MPAs) are the best-known tool used to protect coastal and marine areas and preserve marine biodiversity and ecosystems, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) acknowledges that other spatial management measures – such as FRAs – can help preserve biodiversity.

The General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has long used spatial measures in support of fisheries management, with the added value of conserving biodiversity. In 2005, the GFCM took the pioneer decision of establishing a deep-sea FRA prohibiting bottom trawling and dredging below 1 000 m in its area of application, as a precautionary approach to prevent the potential expansion of fishing activities in the relatively unknown deep-sea ecosystems. Since then, the GFCM has established 10 additional FRAs throughout the Mediterranean Sea.

Fisheries restricted areas have the dual aim of enhancing fisheries productivity by regulating fishing activities in essential fish habitats (i.e. nurseries and spawning grounds of commercially important species), acting as refuges for many species, and protecting vulnerable marine ecosystems (i.e. benthic habitats that could be negatively impacted by bottom-contact fishing activities). The latest FRA – established in the Otranto Channel, in the southern Adriatic Sea, in November 2024 – will enter into force in April 2025 and will address both essential fish habitats for commercial crustacean species and vulnerable marine ecosystems formed by the deep-sea soft coral Isidella elongata.

“Essential fish habitats play a key role in preserving renewable resources and ensuring long-term sustainable recruitment. Known as the areas with the largest biomass of marine organisms, they are often the main fishing areas for certain fisheries. In a situation of excessive exploitation, one of the most effective forms of protection is the establishment of restrictive spatial and temporal regulations in these areas. In this way, it is possible to protect organisms in their most sensitive life stages (spawners, recruits and juveniles) as well as in the time and space where growth and spawning occur,” explained Nedo Vrgoč, PhD, Head of Laboratory of Fisheries Science, Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Croatia.

Mr Vrgoč illustrated the success story of the Jabuka/Pomo Pit FRA in the Adriatic Sea, established by the GFCM in 2017.

“As the majority of demersal resources in the Adriatic Sea were overexploited, the Jabuka/Pomo Pit area, which was the most important spawning and nursery area, was placed under a special fishing regime. Only a few years later, positive changes in the state of resources are noticeable, both in the protected area and in the surrounding sea,” he said.

Multiple paths to biodiversity conservation

Spatial protection to enhance biodiversity conservation has become more and more relevant in the past decade. Target 14.5 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals called on countries to conserve 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020. More recently, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework set as a target the protection of 30 percent of the planet by 2030 (“30 by 30” target). The good news is that these targets can be met either by increasing the number of MPAs or through already existing spatial management measures that have been shown to contribute to biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. However, in order for these other measures to count towards area protection targets, they must be officially recognized and reported as other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) through an ad hoc screening process.

“Other effective area-based conservation measures have the potential to help broaden the global perspective on who is contributing to biodiversity conservation,” said Amber Himes-Cornell, Fishery Officer of the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Division. “Considering this, the importance of FRAs established by the GFCM has grown significantly given their potential for mainstreaming biodiversity conservation in the fisheries sector.”

While the screening process and reporting of OECMs is ongoing and remains the prerogative of countries, FAO and the GFCM are assisting their Members with training and engagement on these topics. The FAO Handbook for identifying, evaluating, and reporting other effective area-based conservation measures in marine fisheries provides countries and stakeholders with examples of how area-based management tools used to manage fisheries qualify as fisheries OECMs.

In parallel, the GFCM is fully committed to reinforcing FRAs as management tools for fisheries sustainability and biodiversity conservation, ensuring they are associated to fisheries multiannual management plans or monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) plans.

In addition to establishing new FRAs, the GFCM regularly assesses compliance in existing FRAs through targeted MCS measures. This includes voluntary joint inspections at sea schemes, which pool resources and expertise from multiple GFCM countries to ensure no illegal fishing occurs within FRAs. A notable example can be found in the Strait of Sicily, where a GFCM joint inspection scheme contributes to enforcing the FRAs in East of Adventure Bank, West of Gela Basin and East of Malta Bank, as well as portions of the deep-sea FRA.

Furthermore, the deep-sea FRA is now the subject of dedicated pilot studies to explore the socioeconomic importance of demersal fisheries between 800 and 1000 m depth, in view of a possible shift of the FRA’s depth limit to 800 m.

Last but not least, in 2020, the GFCM created a dedicated database of sensitive benthic habitats and species in order to facilitate the work of experts in identifying new areas that could deserve special attention from fisheries managers. The database compiles data on the presence/absence of VME indicators from a wide variety of sources, such as scientific surveys, oceanographic campaigns, published literature, and fishing activities. Information from the database is available for consultation to all GFCM experts in view of providing advice to the Scientific Advisory Committee on Fisheries. As such, it is recognized as the primary source of information to identify benthic biodiversity hotspots. In parallel, the GFCM capacity development programmes MedSea4Fish and BlackSea4Fish are supporting GFCM Members in implementing standardized surveys-at-sea, which on the one hand feed the database and on the other provide the basis for the identification of additional essential fish habitats and thus potential new FRAs.

The GFCM’s work on spatial management is made possible thanks to the financial support of the European Union, main donor of the GFCM, as well as the support provided by the Global Environmental Facility.