GTPMR

The overall objective of the Working Group on Recreational Marine Fisheries (Grupo de Trabajo de Pesca Marina Recreativa-GT PMR) is to reinforce the socio-ecological sustainability of this activity, promoting a network of collaboration and knowledge transfer between fishermen’s organisations, research centres, companies and public administrations.

Recreational fishing is an important activity in Europe, with nine million fishers involved. The EU is obliged to provide data on recreational catches in the framework of the Data Collection Framework (DCF) and the Multiannual Plan (EU MAP). In Spain there are 900.000 marine recreational fishermen who annually catch 40000 tonnes of fish. However, there is no systematic collection of information on these catches.

This group contributes to the development of coherent, comparable and adaptive Data Collection Frameworks (DCFs) in Spain at a time when different regional initiatives are being designed and tested. The GT PMR network has strengthened coordination and coherence between these initiatives to provide information at the state level. The exchange of information between regional initiatives, including agreements on methodologies and exchange of experiences between science, administrations and users are key actions of the network.