Oceana has called on French Fisheries Minister Stéphane Travert to support “courageous measures to reform fisheries management in the Mediterranean”, the NGO told us on Tuesday 19 June.
Over 90% of Mediterranean stocks are overfished.
The European Commission recently proposed a multiannual management plan for Western Mediterranean stocks (see EUROPE 11984), covering the most important demersal species (hake, red mullet, pink shrimp and langoustine). Oceana points out that these species are fished principally through bottom trawling.
It calls on France, therefore, to support a ban on bottom trawling “to give stocks a chance to recover and to encourage sustainable small-scale fishing”, said Oceana’s Executive Director in Europe Lasse Gustavsson.
Oceana and other NGOs have called for the multiannual management plan to ensure an end to overfishing by 2020 and extend restrictions on bottom trawling in the coastal strip to depths of less than 100 metres (to protect juvenile fish). Oceana also calls for the closure of fishing in deeper zones to protect spawning grounds and sensitive habitats. It also expresses alarm at the untenable situation for certain species, such as hake in the Gulf of Lion. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)