The first public presentations of the results of the MINOUW project case studies received support from fishermen, members of the Mediterranean fishing industry (MEDAC) and high-level EU representatives at Palma de Mallorca, Spain on October 11th.
MINOUW project scientists Beatriz Morales-Nin, Toni Grau, Sergio Vitale, Karim Erzini, George Tserpes, Claudio Viva and Francesc Maynou presented project results relating to technological solutions for reducing discards. Successfully bringing together scientists, fishermen and policy makers is one of the foundations of the project’s success, and the presentations were followed by a lively and stimulating discussion session moderated by Marco Costantini, WWF.
MINOUW is playing a positive role in changing the attitudes of Mediterranean fishermen towards fisheries exploitation and the European Commission is closely following our results. Valérie Lainé, from the EU DG Mare (The European Commission Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries), was in attendance at the meeting:
“We believe, in DG Mare and the EU Commission, that such projects are very important for the implementation of the CFP (Common Fisheries Policy) and in particular the Landing Obligation. They enable fishermen, NGOs and scientists to gather and talk in a concrete way about the technical problems they can meet for the implementation of the landing obligation. We support the MINOUW project, as it is going in the right direction”, she said.
The next MINOUW event will be on November 15th in Brussels, where the Consortium has again been invited to discuss technical solutions with DG Mare in a Seminar on the Landing Obligation. The November event is organized by the European Commission, who will be inviting a select number of MINOUW scientists to attend and present their findings.
Results for almost all the MINOUW project case studies are now available here, along with supporting dissemination material and videos showing the project in action. Videos are available with subtitles in local languages.