Keywords: Adriatic Sea - catch statistics - MED - population dynamics - Sardina pilchardus - shared stocks - stock assessment

Abstract

Sardine (Sardina pilchardus, Walb.) is one of the most important commercial species of the Adriatic Sea. Stock of sardine, living in the northern and central Adriatic Sea, is shared between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. This assessment is relative to the sardine stock of the northern and central Adriatic Sea (GFCM GSA 17), pooling together data coming from Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. It has been carried out in the context of the AdriaMed-SP research programme . The annual catch of sardine for the three countries mentioned was obtained for the time interval 1975-2003. These quantities were distributed into fish age classes, so that catch-at-age data were available. That represented the basic input data of Virtual Population Analysis (VPA), employed for this stock assessment. Annual values of mid-year stock biomass at sea, annual values of the unweighted mean fishing mortality rate over the age class range 0-5 were obtained. In addition, annual exploitation rates were calculated, compared with a threshold derived from literature and suggested for small pelagics. Since a decline in stock biomass was observed after the peak in the first half of the1980s, and the lowest values of this series correspond just to recent years, it would be unwise for fishing effort to be allowed to increase. The exploitation is just higher than the threshold. Furthermore, difficulties in obtaining economically satisfactory catches by fishermen were perceived both in Italy and Croatia.