The annual meeting of the UN Food and Agriculture’s (FAO) General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean convened the second week of January 2007 and concluded with the adoption of new measures aimed at conserving the region’s fish stocks.

The event gathered representatives from 19 countries plus the European Community and culminated with an agreement on the use of new, more selective types of netting in bottom trawls that will permit small juvenile fish that have not yet reproduced to escape capture and return to the wild to breed. Among the species that will benefit are red mullet and hake, categorized as either fully or overexploited by FAO. Additional agreements included the establishment of a common set of benchmarks for measuring fishing fleets’ capacity and assessing their impacts on shared fish stocks, and new rules for tuna fishing, recently adopted by and forwarded from the International Commission on Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT).
Link to further information
FAO News Release, 16 January 2007