Socio-economic forces have been

observed to be determinant in shaping fishery exploitation patterns and management. Stepping from these premises, the current study has reviewed the applicability of a management system based on TFC in the Mediterranean. Most options for quota determination and allocation criteria highlighted in the study can be considered as “pure options”, but several other options could be considered by combining a number of different factors, for instance setting a catch quota for a group of species rather than a single species, and taking into account combinations of catch quotas and other parameters such as fishing compound screening assay areas, fishing systems, fishing SCH772984 times. A good example is the combination of a catch quota (e.g. tons of red mullets) caught by a specific fishing system (bottom trawling) in a specific fishing area (GSA 17). Such a «mixed-criteria» option would have all the advantages

of the «pure option» n.1 (catch quota), and in general it would allow to better manage a specific fisheries segment from both the resource and the socio-economic point of view. In addition, linking catch quotas to specific fishing areas and systems would allow to better implement the interventions included in local management plans. The adoption of measures developed at the local scale would allow to fine tuning of the socio-economic interventions aimed at compensating income losses due to fishing effort restrictions. One of the main disadvantages of this mixed criteria is the risk of “freezing” the system since fishing vessels would be forced to operate only in specific areas (e.g. only in GSA 17). O-methylated flavonoid But this is the real situation for most of the fleet. In the case of catch quotas set

for groups of species, if the target is to have a direct connection with a species’ level of exploitation (fishing pressure on each species), the only solution is to determine the combined quota as the weighted sum of quantities that can be caught for each species, but this could be very difficult to determine. If an overall catch quota is set with no limits assigned to each single species, the risk is to have a more intense fishing pressure on higher-value species, so that these will tend to be overexploited, and the lower-value species will tend to be discarded. In all cases and whatever the option chosen, control and surveillance activities will have to be stricter, both on landings and out at sea, with higher costs and obligations. Ideally, a TFC system based on quantities would be more meaningful if applied to catches rather than to landings, but this would imply the implementation of complex control systems on board fishing vessels.