Acronym NA
Category
Fisheries
Title Fishery in the Northern Adriatic sea and the Lagoon of Venice from the failure of Serenissima to today: an historical and ecological analysis Programme Nat. Programme (supported by ESIF)
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National-European Coordinator NA Coordinator email NA
Coordinator institution
NA
Institutions involved
ISPRA - Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (Italy) ,
NA - University of Haifa (Israel) ,
Start year 2006 End year 2010 Funding (€) € 80,000 Website http://hmapcoml.org/projects/m&b/ Summary In the marine realm fishery has been described as the major driving force altering fish communities. Moreover, fishery chronologically precedes all other human sources of disturbance, such as pollution, eutrophication and anthropogenic climate change. Marine ecosystems have been severely altered centuries ago, while management policies of marine resources are in most cases based exclusively on recent (few decades) observations. This could lead to the underestimation of ecosystems productive capacity and species biodiversity, the well-known "shifting baseline syndrome". Therefore, the recovery and analysis of historical data is now at the forefront of fishery science, which is trying to reconsider past baselines to better understand ecosystems dynamics and to set targets for restoration and management. This was the main task of the global project History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP), in whose context this project was developed. The challenge when studying long-term trajectories of marine species is the collection and analysis of proxy data, since qualitative information on the past abundance of marine organisms is common in many areas, while ad hoc quantitative data are lacking. In this framework the Northern Adriatic Sea is a valuable case study, due to the abundance of historical sources on fish fauna and fishing activities and due to its ecological value, which derives from the high primary and secondary productivity that makes it one of the most exploited Mediterranean basins. This project aimed at describing the development of fishing capacity between 1800 and 2000 in the area and studying long-term (2 centuries) changes in fish community through naturalists' descriptions of marine fauna and landing statistics. An increase in the number of fishing boats and fishermen characterized the period between the second half of the 19th century and the 1st World War. A real revolution of fishing activities occurred after the 2nd World War, with the introduction of the engine propeller and other technological devices, as for instance the acoustic fish finders or the synthetic fibres. The intercalibration and integration of naturalists' descriptions of fish fauna and landings allowed constructing a semi-quantitative 2 centuries time-series of species "perceived abundance". Temporal trends of fish community structure indicators highlighted the presence of a long-term "fishing down" process. Chondrichthyes, big demersal and late-maturing species relative biomass, in fact, significantly declined, indicating the presence of long-term changes in the structure of the fish community.
This project aimed at describing the development of fishing capacity between 1800 and 2000 in the Northern Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean) and studying long-term (2 centuries) changes in fish community structure integrating different data sources, such as naturalists' descriptions of marine fauna and landing statistics.
Keywords
Fisheries management;
Landing;
Catch;
Marine Region
74
Northern Adriatic (GSA 17)
1
Marine Region Map
