Keywords: demersal fisheries - development projects - fishery management - fishery resources - international cooperation - marine fisheries - pelagic fisheries - regional planning - research programmes - shared stocks

Abstract

The seventh meeting of the Coordination Committee of the FAO AdriaMed Regional Project “Scientific Cooperation to Support Responsible Fisheries in the Adriatic Sea” was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 11th and 12th October 2005. It was attended by representatives of the Project’s participating countries (Albania, Croatia, Italy, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovenia) and other interested parties. The meeting sought to present and discuss the results of the activities carried out by the Project referring to the period 2004-2005, the so-called “Bridging Period”. The activities followed the methodological approach used by the Project and were presented according to the three main components that are: the Adriatic Fishery resources, the Adriatic social and economical fishery sciences and the Adriatic fishery statistics and information systems. The Committee was reminded that the end of the AdriaMed Project’s “bridging period” was foreseen for 31/10/2005, and attention was drawn on the working paper “Project Future Implementation”, in which objectives, outputs and activities of the proposed extension phase of AdriaMed were introduced and illustrated. In principle, there was a general agreement and expression of satisfaction by the Committee towards the document, however some fine-tuning is still required, in particular for the introduction of some of the activities and outputs. There was also a general recommendation by the Committee to move the Project Headquarters to Rome as this represents for AdriaMed a better logistic situation, also considering cost-efficiency aspects. The period from November 2005 to January 2006 was considered the most appropriate timescale for the implementation of the programme for the next year and for the transfer to FAO HQ.