Sustainable governance of coastal fisheries

Coastal fishers have teamed up with three fisheries Local Action Groups (LAGs) to sustainably manage the local fisheries and ensure the fishers’ livelihood in the future. At the same time, they have developed an app, ProPesca, to facilitate the lives of the coastal fishers.

The Gulf of Cadiz has many coastal communities dependant on fisheries, so sustainable management of this sector is of great importance. The three fisheries LAGs surrounding the gulf decided to join forces to draw up a strategic plan promoting sustainability and look for ways to help fishers in their daily lives. To increase the fishers’ participation in the local governance of the area and to ensure the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the fisheries sector, each of the three areas drafted a plan setting out its own details and needs. An overarching strategic plan was then developed for all three areas, in cooperation with local scientific authorities. The strategic plan presents all the measures needed to guarantee a sustainable future for the fishing sector.

As part of the project, an app, named ProPesca, was launched to facilitate fisheries management by the artisanal coastal fishers of the Gulf. Vessel owners, fishers, skippers and crew can easily access all the daily expiry and sales alerts for their vessels in near real time. They can check in advance the average selling price of each species in every fish auction participating in the project and balance their catches against their available quotas. The app also provides access to important general information such as the scientific names of species, allowable sizes, prohibited species and closed seasons.