The Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of the Balearic Islands have collaborated in this research.
IEO-CSIC
The Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO-CSIC), with the support of the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), has led a project that analyzes the recorded catches of albacore tuna in Mallorca, Spain, over the past 19 years.
In this way, the organization aims to demonstrate how records collected by sources independent from commercial fisheries or scientific sampling (in this case, recreational fishing tournaments) can contribute to improving fisheries management.
This study has been published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science and provides answers to the scarcity of reliable data, which ultimately generates "significant" uncertainty in scientific recommendations, according to the IEO-CSIC.
The catch records from these sport fishing tournaments end up becoming a sentinel time series that detects unusual changes in fish population abundance and helps fisheries management identify them as an early warning signal.
Although no abrupt changes have been detected in the tuna population, the IEO-CSIC anticipates that the species may have been subjected to strong fishing pressure since the early 2000s, and that this could translate into an overexploitation scenario in the near future.
"Reporting recreational fishing activity is a crucial form of citizen science, as it allows us to access consistent, high-quality data that help us better understand the fluctuations of species of great interest, such as Mediterranean albacore," assured Alejandro Carreño-Castilla, first author of the study and predoctoral researcher for the Government of the Balearic Islands at the Balearic Oceanographic Centre.
This study has been co-funded by the European Union through the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF) as part of the National Program for the collection, management, and use of data from the fisheries sector, and for supporting scientific advice related to the Common Fisheries Policy.