It is argued here that fisheries assessment and management in the Mediterranean should consider not only traditional factors such as abundance and biomass of exploited resources and fishing effort, but also other relevant factors that have not been considered or properly addressed before, such as the identification and protection of essential fish habitats and benthic communities, the management of river outflows, the monitoring and management of recreational uses in coastal zones, the evaluation of the reproductive potential and physiological condition of exploited fishes and the consideration of climate change impacts. This chapter recommends a number of measures that will make possible a move from the traditional non-adaptive management, which tended to consider just those species of commercial importance, towards an adaptive system that incorporates explicit consideration of the broader marine environment issues

In the Mediterranean, the standard fisheries management measures have been based mainly on effort limitation, minimum landing sizes for certain species and minimum mesh sizes. However, these measures will neither provide on their own full protection to all ecosystems attributes in need of protection, nor will guarantee sustainable fisheries. This chapter deals with new directions and ideas in the assessment and management of exploited marine resources in the Mediterranean, which must allow the future development of ecosystem approaches to fisheries management.

33 pages, 3 tables

Peer reviewed