Overseas
During the 34th Rassegna del Mare in Trapani, Franco Andaloro, member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Biologists Foundation (FIB), delivered one of the most lucid and disarming speeches of the entire event.
Speaking with the candor of someone who knows the industry from within, Andaloro retraced three decades of Italian fisheries in the Mediterranean, acknowledging the systemic failures that led to its decline. Science, politics, and trade associations—all, in different ways—have contributed to the gradual impoverishment of the sector.
It was not an accusation, but a collective reflection: “We all got it wrong,” was the message Andaloro left the audience.
A Model Built on the Wrong Assumptions
According to Andaloro, Italian fisheries in the Mediterranean have been managed for thirty years as if this sea were an ocean.
European policies—supported by scientific research that never truly embraced an ecosystem approach—developed resource management plans designed for high-biomass, low-biodiversity oceans, based solely on achieving the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY).
Applied to the Mediterranean—an enclosed, multispecies sea—these models have proven not only ineffective but devastating.
Italy has reduced its fishing fleet by over 50%, demolished hundreds of vessels, and dispersed historical expertise—without achieving either increased catches or stock recovery. Yet, fleet decommissioning remains the only policy tool still in use.
It is the paradox of a system that chose mathematics over ecology.
Science, Politics, and Representation: A Missed Alliance
Andaloro also pointed to the fragmentation of responsibility.
Science, he argued, has often preferred to produce “comfortable” data—easily digestible in technical committees—rather than interpret the true complexity of the Mediterranean.
Politics has favored temporary measures and social cushioning over long-term planning.
Trade associations, meanwhile, have too often focused on day-to-day survival rather than vision and innovation.
The result is a system that, for three decades, has acted as if the end of fishing were both foreseeable and inevitable.
A Fragile and Forgotten Mediterranean
Andaloro reminded that the fisheries crisis is not merely a matter of fleets or licenses.
It is the symptom of a profoundly altered sea, where the combination of environmental and human pressures has irreversibly changed ecological balances.
Coastal pollution, marine plastics, acidification, and rising temperatures have all shifted species distribution.
Changes in Levantine currents caused by climate change have redirected nutrient flows away from the Strait of Sicily toward other seas, triggering the collapse of small pelagic biomass that once sustained Sicilian and Tunisian fisheries.
In this context, research has continued to describe these phenomena without translating them into effective management tools, while political responses have remained slow and fragmented.
The Perfect Storm and the Maritime Space Grab
Today, Mediterranean fisheries face a “perfect storm”: a structural crisis compounded by the new threat of maritime space appropriation.
Andaloro highlighted the more than 100 offshore wind farm projects proposed without real involvement of coastal communities.
Maritime spatial planning, though required by EU directives, has largely remained theoretical—developed through bureaucratic logic that overlooks local economies.
This trend risks further marginalizing fisheries, confining them to the edges of a sea increasingly valued for activities that no longer recognize fishing as part of its identity.
The result is a loss of social sustainability and cultural identity in coastal communities, with repercussions that could ultimately harm tourism itself.
The Mediterranean as an Ecosystem, Not a Statistic
Andaloro concluded with a call for shared responsibility.
The Mediterranean cannot be managed with the same tools applied to oceans, nor can fishing be reduced to figures compensated with subsidies.
What is needed is ecosystem-based fisheries management, grounded in real knowledge, participation, and adaptability.
Science, institutions, and associations must once again work together—overcoming the fragmentation that has weakened the sector—and confront the Mediterranean challenge: managing the sea and its resources in a complex geopolitical setting where EU rules do not apply to North African countries and international norms are often ignored.
As Andaloro warned, “The sea cannot be governed with abstract models, but with awareness, ethics, and respect.”
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