Ionian Sea Archipelago - Exploitation

The fishing fleet in the study area includes 9 bottom trawlers, 12 purse seiners, 24 beach seiners, 49 longliners and 213 boats trammel netters (Bearzi et al. 2008). According to Tsikliras et al. (2007) about 70 species of fish, cephalopods and crustaceans are fished commercially in the area, with a few constituting the main targets: European pilchard (Sardina pilchardus); European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus); Mediterranean horse mackerel (Trachurus mediterraneus); Atlantic bonito (Sarda sarda); bogue (Boops boops); picarel (Spicara smaris); European hake (Merluccius merluccius); red mullet (Mullus barbatus) and striped red mullet (Mullus surmuletus). Beach seiners and purse seiners primarily catch small pelagics, mainly sardines, while trawlers and netters catch mostly demersal species (M. merluccius, M. surmuletus and B. boops) (Gonzalvo et al. 2010).

The purse seiners, that constitute only 3% of the total fishing fleet, remove on average 33% of the total biomass. The landings of purse seiners, beach seiners and trawlers are characterised by a high number of individuals below the minimum legal size that are either discarded or marketed illegally (Gonzalvo et al. 2010). Trammel netters are responsible for only 26% of total biomass removal, despite being by far the predominant fishing boat type (i.e. about 70% of the active fishing fleet).

Several studies have highlighted the overall degradation of the Inner Ionian Sea Archipelago ecosystem (Bearzi et al. 2010, Gonzalvo et al. 2010, Piroddi et al. 2010). In particular, the ecosystem modelling approach used for the area has shown remarkable declines of sardines, anchovies and other important pelagic and demersal fish stocks since the late 1960s. The collapse was mainly caused by an intensive fishing effort that increased until the end of the 1990s, as observed also in the literature (Kapadagakis et al. 2001, Stergiou et al. 2007).