Authors: Ioannis Giovos, Ioannis Keramidas, Charalampos Antoniou, Alan Deidun, Toni Font, Periklis Kleitou, Josep Lloret, Sanja Matić‐Skoko, Alicia Said, Francesco Tiralongo, and Dimitrios K. Moutopoulos
This paper uses publicly available videos on social media to construct the profile of recreational fisheries in the EU‐Mediterranean countries. Given that the effects of recreational fisheries on fish stocks in the Mediterranean Sea remain largely unknown due to difficulties in monitoring, the study allows a better understanding of the variety of species and gears used in different countries.
The authors present the most popular recreational fishing techniques in the region and by country, and highlight that recreational fishing in the Mediterranean Sea is multispecies in nature and differences in species composition depends on the fishing technique used rather than on the country. The findings fill an important knowledge gap on recreational fishing activities, and the methodology provides an innovative approach to gather statistics on data‐poor thematic areas that can potentially complement other data sets.
