The annual report of the Regional Coordination Group for the Mediterranean and Black Sea (RCG Med&BS) is now available for public consultation on the RCGs website.
The RCG Med&BS met in Montpellier, France for their Annual Meeting from 26 – 30 August 2024 to discuss the data needs, data collection and current priorities for fisheries data collection in the region. The meeting was chaired by Emmanuel Tessier (FRA) and Charis Charilaou (CYP) and hosted by the Conseil Régional d’Occitanie
The event was followed by 45 experts representing the ten Member States (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Romania, Slovenia, Spain) together with DG MARE, CINEA, JRC and GFCM as the main end-users. Additionally, the chairs of several pan regional subgroups, namely: recreational fisheries, metier and transversal issues and diadromous fishes, participated in the meeting to enhance and strengthen the pan regional coordination on these specifies areas of interest.
The identification of data needs, data issues and the use of data were addressed in close collaboration with the main end-users. The increasing number of data calls has become a real burden, Member States highlighted that they need more capacity to address data calls and ad hoc data requests. The improvement of data through quality checks and the public availability of fishery-dependent and survey data were identified as key priorities.
The progress of RDBFIS project was presented and the state of play and perspectives on Med & BS regional database (RDB) deserved the group´s attention. The RCG was informed of the continuation of the RDBFIS project until 2026, in order to find a permanent host and to obtain a fully operational database for data submission.
The Regional Work Plan (RWP) for the Med&BS 2025-2027, reflecting all the intersessional subgroups work, will be integrated in the National Work Plans. Key areas of interest for the development of the RWP are: stomach contents, quality check, sampling optimisation, recreational fisheries and bycatch monitoring.
Several achievements are highlighted as a result of the RCG Med&BS discussions during the meeting:
- The group agreed to make DCF survey data publicly available, excluding the last 3 years of data.
- The RCG set priorities for the servicing of data calls through RDBFIS.
- The Med & BS RDB Steering Committee was reconvened with the aim to define a roadmap and the governance structure, together with a final solution for hosting the RDB; chaired by Kolyo Zhelev (BGR).
- The establishment of the ISSG on Quality checks; chaired by Kostas Touloumis (GRC).
All the details about the Meeting are available in the 2024 RCG Med&BS Meeting report. For more information please visit: https://www.fisheries-rcg.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024_RCG-MedBS-TM-Report_final.pdf