THE CURRENT STATE OF MARINE RESOURCES IN THE BLACK SEA

Abstract

The Black Sea is one the important sub-areas of the Mediterranean Basin and one of the most complex ecosystems in the region. The structure of the Black Sea ecosystem differs from the Mediterranean in that the diversity is low and the dominant groups are different. On the contrary, the abundance, biomass, and productivity of the Black Sea are higher than the Mediterranean. In this presentation, riparian countries of the Black Sea (Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukrania) are compared by means of catch statistics, the number of fishing vessels, targeted and landed species. For this purpose, FishStat Plus - Universal software for fishery statistical time series data (1950-2018) and Turkish Statistical Institute’s (TurkStat) data were used to generate the long term landed catch plots. Fishing mortality (F) and exploitation rates (E) were reviewed from published papers and scientific reports. Among riparian countries, Turkey uses some advantages such as long coastline, the number of fishing vessels and fishermen, modernized fishing fleet, etc. Turkey seems obviously leader with numerical domination by the fishing fleet and landings. Black Sea fishery has a special role in the living marine resources of Turkey. Fish caught in the Black Sea constitutes approximately 80% of the total production of Turkey. From the marine resource perspective, European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), European sprat (Sprattus sprattus), Atlantic bonito (Sarda sarda), bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix), whiting (Merlangius merlangus), red mullet (Mullus barbatus), and turbot (Scopthalmus maximus) are the most landed species over a long time period. However, most of these important and traditional marine resources are over-fished by means of fishing mortality and/or exploitation rate and total landings. In the overall, to solve the fisheries-related problems in the Black Sea, a basin-wide fishery management perspective joint by all riparian countries is needed.