Mariagrazia Graziano
In the Mediterranean, a Lack of Accessible Information Is Undermining Fisheries Management
- Published
Scaling vessel tracking and data access is vital for marine protection, argues Mariagrazia Graziano
For a centuries-old maritime crossroads, the Mediterranean is remarkably opaque. It is also one of the most intensively fished seas in the world. According to estimates, nearly 60 percent of its fish stocks are overexploited, threatening a $5.4 billion (€4.6 billion) industry and the livelihoods of 180,000 people. Ensuring the survival of these waters requires something the Mediterranean has long lacked — a clear, shared picture of what is actually happening at sea.
“Transparency of human activity at sea serves as a foundation for trust,” says Mariagrazia Graziano, Global Fishing Watch’s senior manager for Europe and the Mediterranean. “More importantly, it leads to the long-term sustainability that benefits both industry actors and the resources they depend on.”
While policies across the Mediterranean region have evolved and its marine protected areas have indeed expanded, a significant gap remains between conservation ambition and real-world enforcement. Much of the basin continues to be a blind spot for authorities, limiting their ability to manage shared resources or hold bad actors to account. According to Graziano, the key to closing this gap is making high-quality data accessible to those who need it most.
As the European Union (EU) doubles down on data-driven governance, the mission in the Mediterranean is clear: visibility is the only path to true accountability. Without it, even the most ambitious protection measures risk falling short. We sat down with Graziano to discuss how transparency can transform governance in the Mediterranean and create a fairer, more sustainable future for the region’s oceans.
In what ways can the EU lead on vessel tracking to promote sustainability, and how can we address industry fears regarding data privacy?
The EU has an opportunity to reinforce its leadership in sustainable fisheries by building on a series of recent initiatives that place transparency and data at the heart of ocean governance. From the European Ocean Pact and the Digital Twin of the Ocean to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s recent announcement of the OceanEye initiative, Brussels has recognized that transparency is more than just data collection — it’s about generating knowledge that can inform better decision-making.
In that context, EU institutions have done well to prioritize the wider adoption of vessel tracking systems across all fleets and improve access to automatic identification system (AIS) and vessel monitoring system (VMS) insights. Despite this, many countries across the Mediterranean region continue to lag in implementation. Strengthening these tools would enhance traceability while improving oversight and accountability across the sector, particularly for seafood imports coming from outside the EU.
More broadly, policymakers are increasingly acknowledging the role of scientific evidence as a key enabler of dialogue around ocean governance. Data can help establish frameworks for more informed and balanced decision-making that facilitates constructive engagement among stakeholders involved in ocean governance.
This is where Global Fishing Watch comes in. As a technical and scientific partner, we support oversight and management efforts in regions such as the Mediterranean by providing transparent, evidence-based insights aligned with the EU’s emphasis on science-led governance.
Of course, there may be some industry or government stakeholders who share concerns about transparency. But we’re keen to note that transparency is not about undermining competitiveness. Rather it is about establishing a common baseline of information. In doing so, it can help level the playing field, ensuring that all actors operate under comparable standards and are held to account in the same way.
Global Fishing Watch has identified transparency as a transformational solution for the Mediterranean. What is the biggest data gap that exists today?
The transparency gap we face in the Mediterranean today is largely tied to the limited visibility we have of fishing activity across the region. Large swathes of fishing activity taking place across the Mediterranean — particularly that of smaller-scale fleets — remain effectively hidden, either because tracking is optional, inconsistent or siloed within national borders.
This creates a disconnect between what we know on paper and what is actually happening on the water, making it more difficult to assess pressure on ecosystems and manage shared stocks effectively.
Closing that gap will require both policy and technical solutions. A mandate that expands vessel tracking to all fleet segments would be an important step, but taken on its own it would be insufficient. Data must also be accessible and usable across institutions.
With the right systems in place, tools like Marine Manager and Vessel Viewer can turn that data into actionable insights and help authorities identify pressure hotspots, target enforcement efforts and allocate resources more efficiently. Ultimately, this is about smarter and more efficient management: improving outcomes for fisheries while making better use of limited capacity.
Turning our transparency ambitions into practice also depends on sustained cooperation at the national and regional level. Just last year, Global Fishing Watch and the Government of Montenegro signed a memorandum of understanding establishing a five-year framework for confidential VMS data sharing and technical collaboration to strengthen monitoring, control and surveillance across the Adriatic Sea. Over the past months, our Europe and Mediterranean team has been working closely with Montenegrin authorities to align on operational needs, build trust and identify the most effective Global Fishing Watch tools and workflows for both day-to-day monitoring and longer-term decision-making. The agreement is supported by a detailed workplan that translates shared priorities into practical action.
This kind of partnership is critical to closing the transparency gap in practice. It is not only about increasing the availability of data, but about ensuring that it can be securely shared, interpreted and applied by institutions on the ground to support more informed, coordinated and effective fisheries management.
What role did Global Fishing Watch play in the successful protection efforts across the Otranto Channel and the Adriatic?
Our work with the Government of Albania on the Otranto Channel Fisheries Restricted Area is a perfect example of how technology can be wielded to support critical conservation efforts. In the case of Otranto, we partnered with Albanian authorities to bring greater clarity to a fundamental question we see throughout our work: where and when does fishing activity overlap with sensitive marine ecosystems? By combining vessel tracking data with ecological information, such as the distribution of vulnerable deep-water corals, we were able to map fishing effort and translate that data into decision-relevant insights.
However, the work isn’t finished. We are continuing to collaborate with our regional partners to monitor how fishing patterns in the Otranto Channel evolve over time. At the same time, we are tracking activity inside and around the restricted area and assessing whether pressure on vulnerable habitats is indeed decreasing.
These processes do not deliver results overnight. But they are critical to ensuring that conservation measures are effective and support the long-term protection and recovery of some of the Mediterranean’s most fragile ecosystems.
Following recent efforts to protect Norway lobster in the Adriatic, how did data provide the foundation for these binding regional measures?
The Norway lobster case underscores how critical shared understanding of data is to delivering good fisheries governance in the Mediterranean. Indeed, what made this effort effective was the combination of rigorous scientific analysis, spatial data on fishing activity and our sustained engagement with national authorities and regional institutions such as the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean.
By bringing these elements together, we were able to help establish a common evidence base that aligned the EU, Albania and Montenegro around the same diagnosis of the problem. That alignment was particularly critical in a region where fish stocks naturally traverse country borders and where fragmented approaches to fisheries management often fall short. In this case, the alignment helped create the conditions for a binding regional recommendation.
What this illustrates is that moving from data to policy depends on three things: credible and accessible evidence, trusted partnerships and governance frameworks capable of translating agreement into action. In the Mediterranean, where no single country can manage shared resources alone, that regional dimension is indispensable.
The case also highlighted the importance of timing. Data has the greatest impact when it is both robust and delivered at the moment decisions are being shaped. When evidence is aligned within policy windows, it can become a veritable catalyst for action.
Despite years of effort, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing continues to challenge the region. Where are the most critical gaps in the enforcement chain and what can EU and Mediterranean leaders do differently to make conservation more enforceable than symbolic?
Enforcement rarely breaks down at a single point. Instead, it is often the result of gaps across the entire management chain — from how protections are designed to how they are monitored and, ultimately, enforced. That is why so many marine protected areas around the world function as little more than lines on a map: they become “paper parks” which are not designed, monitored or managed with continuous, decision-ready evidence.
But this is exactly where data and technology can make a critical difference. At Global Fishing Watch, we increasingly look at this challenge across three interconnected pillars: design, monitoring and management.
At the design stage, data and analytical tools can help identify where protection measures are most needed, but also anticipate potential impacts — including the displacement of fishing effort to other areas. This is essential to ensure that measures are not only ecologically meaningful, but also socially and economically viable.
In terms of monitoring, improved access to vessel tracking and other datasets allows for a more continuous and transparent understanding of what is happening at sea, helping to detect risks and support compliance. In much of the Mediterranean, visibility at sea is still partial. And if activity cannot be seen, it cannot be managed.
Finally, in the management phase, insights derived from data can inform adaptive approaches, enabling authorities to adjust measures over time and allocate resources more efficiently. Ideally, fisheries management should not be static. It depends on the ability to adjust measures over time, redirecting patrols, refining boundaries and responding to new patterns of activity. That requires data that is not only available, but usable.
For the EU and Mediterranean governments, the priority in 2026 should be to close these gaps in sequence: design measures with evidence, monitor them in near real time and manage them adaptively. That means investing in transparency, strengthening institutional capacity and ensuring data flows across borders. The objective is not simply to restrict activity. It is to make protections credible so that commitments translate into outcomes. Ultimately, I am convinced that enforcement improves when we leverage new technologies to strengthen institutional capacity, reduce costs and enable more targeted and efficient action where it matters most.