Habitat protection under the Mediterranean Sea Regulation: A missed opportunity?

The unrelenting overfishing and degradation of Mediterranean marine ecosystems over the last 15 years offer grounds for questioning the implementation of European Union (EU) policy responses. Not only it is the most overfished sea in the world, with 80% of its fish stocks overexploited, but the region’s unique marine biodiversity faces increasing threats, including from climate change and invasive species, up to a point where the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that 20% of all Mediterranean habitats and species are threatened with extinction. This report explores to what extent the EU Mediterranean Sea Regulation 1967/20061 has delivered, or not, on the protection of sensitive marine habitats and nursery areas as well as on the regulation of destructive fishing gear in Mediterranean fisheries.

In the first part of the report, we analyse information detailing habitat protection efforts (or a lack thereof) by EU Member States since 2007. All countries have generally adopted rules restricting bottom fishing in coastal waters in their national management plans, however this is undermined by too many derogations. As a result, we found that the most coastal of marine habitats, Posidonia beds, were generally better protected than coralligenous and maërl beds, which have been insufficiently mapped and protected in most Member States. Most countries have failed to designate specific  Fisheries Protected Areas (FPA) to conserve fish stocks and sensitive habitats and instead reported areas that lacked scientific justification and were irrelevant to the objectives of the Mediterranean Regulation. In fact, most areas pre-dated this law or were already established for other purposes. Spain and Malta stand out due to exemplary efforts and approaches to protecting sensitive habitats.

In the second part of the report, we examine data showing recent bottom trawling activity over protected habitats and inside FPAs. A total of 7639 hours of bottom fishing occurred in 2019 over the three habitat types covered by the Mediterranean Regulation combined, with the highest bottom fishing intensity found over coralligenous beds, with almost 3,700 hours of fishing, nearly exclusively in Italy. For maërl beds, we found 2280 hours of fishing, mainly by Malta (1496 hours) and Italy (774 hours). Finally, a total of 1568 fishing hours occurred over seagrass beds, mostly located in Italy (1294 hours), Spain (157 hours), Greece (58 hours), and France (46 hours). The findings highlight clear gaps in implementation and enforcement of bottom fishing restrictions over protected habitats, particularly in Italy, where it occurred both over known sensitive habitats within and outside of coastal waters, as well as inside FPAs. Other EU countries did not have such high intensities of bottom fishing over protected habitats, but we detected some trawling in coastal waters, indicating weaknesses in enforcement. Spanish FPAs targeting maërl and coralligenous beds were the only well-enforced and effective examples of spatial protection in place.

We conclude with recommendations for EU Member States to improve implementation, and for the European Commission to inform future policies in the Mediterranean. Our analysis points to lax enforcement by the European Commission, likely giving Member States too much discretion concerning their national management plans and often disregarding scientific advice about possible weaknesses and poor scientific justification presented by national administrations. Finally, Oceana offers perspectives on how future Mediterranean fisheries management could strengthen the protection of sensitive habitats in a holistic way, through broad-scale fishing gear restrictions. Such measures would deliver ecosystem and climate benefits and also support artisanal fisheries in coastal areas.