The Adriatic Sea Technical Unit of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM), a body of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), was inaugurated in Split, Croatia, giving the six countries that share the Adriatic a permanent base for joint fisheries science.

FAO Director-General QU Dongyu attended the ceremony, held ahead of the 37th Session of the FAO Committee on Fisheries, alongside Croatian State Secretary Ivan Matijević, Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries Director Živana Ninčević and GFCM Executive Secretary Miguel Bernal.

The unit will give a permanent subregional presence to strengthen scientific cooperation, support the implementation of management measures and improve coordination among Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Montenegro and Slovenia. It will also feed MedSea4Fish, the GFCM's capacity development programme, with technical expertise and knowledge-sharing across the subregion.

The results it builds on are measurable. Over the past decade GFCM contracting parties have adopted eleven management plans and a set of spatial measures; stock biomass has risen by around 25 percent, and the share of overexploited stocks has fallen from 87 percent in 2013 to 52 percent in 2023. The Adriatic was where the first GFCM multiannual management plan was adopted, in 2013.

"Strong science remains at the centre of progress," Qu said, arguing that reliable data, research and better assessment methods are what turn knowledge into measurable results. He warned that growing demand for aquatic foods, heavier fishing pressure and the climate crisis are all bearing on marine ecosystems, and that countries have to work together and ground decisions in evidence.

The Director-General linked the unit to FAO's Blue Transformation, the agency's approach to making aquatic food systems more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable through stronger fisheries management, responsible aquaculture and better aquatic value chains.

For fishing communities around the Adriatic the practical question is whether shared science produces shared rules that hold. The record of the past decade — rising biomass alongside continued fishing — is the argument the new unit was opened on.

Source: FAO Newsroom