An up-to-date systematic review and unofficial codification of the national fisheries legislation was performed, along with an up-to-date systematic review of environmental, archaeological and maritime legislation, about spatio-temporal restrictions of fishing activities by all fishing gears in the Aegean Sea. Spatio-temporal restrictions established by the European Union and the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterran...

In this Collective Article on “New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records”, we present additional records of species found in the Mediterranean Sea. These records refer to eight different countries throughout the northern part of the basin, and include 28 species, belonging to five phyla. The findings per country include the following species: Spain: Callinectes sapidus and Chelidonura fulvipunctata; Monaco: Aplysia dactylomela; I...

The Collective Article ‘New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records’ of the Mediterranean Marine Science journal offers the means to publish biodiversity records in the Mediterranean Sea. The current article is divided in two parts, for records of native and alien species respectively. The new records of native fish species include: the slender sunfish Ranzania laevis and the scalloped ribbonfish Zu cristatus in Calabria; the Azore...

In the context of the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive and with the intention of contributing to the implementation of a future maritime spatial plan, it was decided to analyze data from the small scale coastal fisheries sector of Greece and estimate the actual extent of its activities, which is largely unknown to date. To this end we identified the most influential components affecting coastal fishing: fishing capacity, ba...

The Collective Article ‘New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records’ of the Mediterranean Marine Science journal offers the means to publish biodiversity records in the Mediterranean Sea. The current article is divided in two parts, for records of alien and native species respectively. The new records of alien species include: the red alga Asparagopsis taxiformis (Crete and Lakonicos Gulf) (Greece); the red alga Grateloupia turutur...

Spatial distribution and life history aspects of Pagellus bogaraveo in the eastern Ionian Sea were investigated using the data from 13 different studies carried out in the area from 1983 to 2010. The spatial patterns of the abundance, biomass and mean size showed that the species inhabits the shallow waters of the shelf ( L T ), moving to deeper waters of the slope (mainly 400–500 m depth) as adults. The spatial pattern of abu...

The diet of the European conger eel Conger conger was investigated for the first time in the Eastern Mediterranean. Fish dominated the European conger eel diet in the deep waters of E. Ionian Sea. All other prey taxa were identified as accidental preys. However, intestine analysis showed that Natantia, Brachyura and Cephalopoda might have a more important contribution in the diet of the species. C. conger exhibited a benthopel...

This article describes in detail the “IMAS-Fish” web-based tool implementation technicalities and provides examples on how can it be used for scientific and management purposes setting new standards in fishery science. “IMAS-Fish” was developed to support the assessment of marine biological resources by: (i) homogenizing all the available datasets under a relational database, (ii) facilitating quality control and data entry, (...

Mapping of ecosystem components (natural and socioeconomic) is a prerequisite for ecosystem-based marine spatial management (EB-MSM). To initiate the process of EB-MSM in the Greek Ionian Sea and the adjacent gulfs, the main relevant ecosystem components were mapped based on existing spatial information and expert judgment. The natural components mapped included habitat types and species targeted for conservation, according to...

The paper presents the quality problem of fishery statistics produced by the conducted land-based and sea-going, large scale sample surveys of the survey programme of the Institute of Marine Biological Resources of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (IMBR/HCMR) in Greece, and the optimality strategies developed in their sampling designs for the maximization of precision of the calculated sample estimates for a given cost...