Spain: Mediterranean countries need more efforts to preserve fishing and its sailors

Mediterranean countries must make “more efforts” to recover species such as hake and shrimp, and to improve the employment situation of fishermen, according to the General Commission on Mediterranean Fisheries (GFCM) of the UN Organization for Agriculture and Food (FAO). The executive secretary of the CGPM, Miguel Bernal, has assured, in an interview with Efeagro, that Mediterranean fisheries have experienced improvements but many species require measures to achieve fully sustainable fishing in those waters. He has defended, however, that fishermen must be at the center of policies and that alternatives must be sought to give more value to their catches or to diversify their activities. Likewise, he has recognized that there is a serious problem of generational change and that it is important to ensure that working conditions are “attractive” so that there are people interested in working in the sector with “the guarantees and social conditions” of any other profession. In ...