Most of the vessels, particularly from Sicily and the southern Adriatic, work local Mediterranean fishing grounds with a small number of vessels heading out to operate on high seas.
Fishing activities inevitably follow the contour of the country’s coastline, with many small harbours alongside some of the big industrial ports such as Genoa. The fleet is predominantly small and old vessels operating out of and meeting local port demand along an 8,000km coastline for a very fragmented market.
A key part of their business is serving the seasonal tourist market so they are also a key element in one of Italy’s biggest earning sectors — coastal leisure bringing in not just domestic tourists but international travellers who have been heading to Italy’s sand and sea for literally centuries. Italy was probably one of the first organised package tour markets, being a key part of the Grand Tour including Venice. Train package tours to Italy were one of the big expansion areas in European tourism after the WW II. Resorts such as Rimini built their air package tours of today on the reputation of that train activity.
Operational fishing grounds are usually close to the Italian coast because of the narrowness of the continental shelf, the presence of straddling and shared stocks and the absence of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs).
The various elements in last year’s new Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) for European fishermen have caused concern among skippers and vessel owners in the Italian fishing sector. They see the new CFP as based too much on technical measures for specific stocks. They believe that the model is wrong and will not work if it is applied rigidly to their Mediterranean environment, which is one of multi-species catches and multi-gear fisheries.
Seeking a Med Plan
The industry is lobbying hard, with Greek colleagues and some interested parties from North Africa, on the makeup of the decision to move as swiftly as possible to a special regime for the Mediterranean. The broad lines of this future, and an enforcement mechanism, were discussed and accepted by the EU fisheries ministers’ council in the autumn of 2003 (Conference of Venice). But the devil will lie in the detail. Southern European countries such as Italy are impatiently waiting for the European Commission to put flesh on the bones of the skeleton action plan and what they have seen thus far they do not like.
Because the Italian industry involves a high numbers of individuals on land and sea (compared to perhaps less then 15,000 for the whole of Scotland’s industry with families) the Mediterranean plan is a sensitive issue in domestic Italian politics.
Main issues affecting Italian fisheries sector in 2003/2004:
* Italian TAC for EU waters is 5,000 tonnes of fish for 2004.
* Italy’s quota for bluefin tuna is 4,920t, out of the 32,000t issued by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT). This quota is similar to the 2002 level but lower than in 2003 when it stood at 5,254,70t. The Italian tuna-processing industry is one of the largest in the world, coming in behind the US and Thailand.
* Italy is the second largest beneficiary of EU CFP funds. It receives 11% of the funding (385.9 million).
* At the moment Italy is in dispute with Croatia over the latter’s demands for an exclusive, Croatian fishing zone in the Adriatic Sea. Italian fishing sector associations have released a joint statement rejecting Croatia’s initiative. The statement highlights the importance of a balanced and homogenous environmental management claiming that “the Adriatic has to remain open to all, and not restricted by local interests that have nothing to do with protection”. Ironically, Croatia both as an independent state today and formerly part of the Yugoslav federation, pioneered the same type of lucrative, coastal tourism as Italy on the opposite coastline. Outdoor fish restaurants, offering the varied ‘catch of the day’ (not frozen, battered cod and chips for the English in Marbella) were one of the main attractions for tourists, particularly from Scandinavia.
* The Conference of Venice, on achieving responsible and sustainable fisheries in the Mediterranean, held last November, has agreed that the scientific advisory committee of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) should draw up concrete proposals on scientific evaluation of migratory and shared stocks in the Mediterranean. They should be before the GFCM by October.
