The Executive Secretary of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM-FAO), Mr Abdellah Srour, and the Director of the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation, Mr Antonio Troya, held a meeting on October 30th, 2015 in the IUCN office of Malaga, to follow up the activities included in the Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations, signed on May 19th, 2014.

After a quick review of their current on-going activities, they discussed the activities that will be developed in 2016 and 2017 and they reviewed all the activities of the agenda agreed on the following main conclusions:

• Cooperation for the development of local communities' activities (small scale fisheries and aquaculture) inside and around marine protected areas.
• Analysis of existing spatial management measures applied to fisheries restricted areas (regional and national) as conservation areas according to their objectives
• Preparation and publication of reports on topics such as the regional labels for marine conservation and management, and on the non-indigenous or invasive species status in the Mediterranean.

In addition other points or exchange of information on ongoing activities were presented. Among these, the Alboran sea platform under development, concerning Spain, Morocco and Algeria, a compendium of links to marine maps from different providers, were presented as an experimental tool for decision makers and researchers. GFCM indicated its interest to provide maps related to Mediterranean fisheries management.

For further information: Alain Jeudy

Photo: Alain Jeudy, Abdellah Srour and Antonio Troya - © IUCN-Med