Co-constructing secure small-scale fisheries: indicators and socio-bio-economic models in the North-West Mediterranean

Despite their crucial role, Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF) in the Mediterranean face numerous challenges with lack of quality data, decline in their numbers and growing competition with other maritime activities among others. In an attempt to solve these problems and secure SSF, several international policy initiatives and research focus has been paid in the last decades. Currently, there are multiple methodologies to gain knowledge on them by assessing their status and simulating scenarios of change. However, the involvement of stakeholders in their construction and the integration of the social dimension remains highly poor. CoFis aims to enhance North-West Mediterranean SSF status by co-constructing fishery indicators and socio-bio-economic models together with fishery stakeholders. To carry out this research, the fellow relies on her background and the extraordinary resources provided by host expertise on fishery science, indicators and ecosystem models. This project will enable Dr. Cánovas-Molina to broaden her expertise on fishery science, to learn new methodologies for SSF improvement of status as well as to meet future challenges on stakeholder engagement in fishery science and management. This combination of expertise is unique, multidisciplinary and multisector, and thus will be a milestone in Dr. Cánovas-Molina career towards an independent scientist of high international visibility.