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Euronews OCEAN Season 4, Episode 11, Small-scale coastal fishing
Small-scale fishers make up half of all those employed in Europe’s fishing sector. Yet when it comes to policymaking, they often find themselves overlooked in favour of industrial-sized organisations.
But they face the same environmental and economic challenges as everyone else, and in Croatia and Greece small-scale fishers are finding innovative ways to respond.
Marking the 2022 Year of Artisanal and Small-scale fisheries, and the World Fisheries Day (21 November), this episode focuses on “small-scale coastal fishing” — the vessels up to 12 meters long without towed gear that represent nearly 75% of all fishing vessels registered in the EU, and nearly half of the employment in the fishing sector.
While it plays an important socio-economic role in local coastal communities, small-scale fishers remain a highly vulnerable group, often with limited access to social protection programmes and financial services and limited capacity to respond to, or plan for, adverse events. In this episode, we cover some of the initiatives to secure a sustainable future to small-scale fishers and marine ecosystems in the Mediterranean, promoted by EU-supported Friends of Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF) Platform.
In Croatia, we meet artisanal fishermen working with scientists to preserve and restore the valuable scampi population supporting small-scale fishing community in the Velebit Channel, and we interview project leaders from WWF helping the Mediterranean fishers shift to better selectivity and sustainability.
Next, on the Greek island of Kythnos, we meet a local family of fishers that have decided to try themselves in pescatourism, showing their community an example of both diversifying their income and reducing the pressure on local fish stocks.
Källa: European Commission