Years of scientific research on recreational fishing in Malta
Competitive sport shore-fishing is a popular recreational activity in the Maltese Islands. Effective management of recreational sportfishing benefits from accurate monitoring and research will best address and mitigate the impacts. For this reason, an effective collaboration between anglers and conservation scientists has been achieved.
To this effect, researchers from the Conservation Biology Research Group from the University of Malta, led by Dr Adriana Vella have been monitoring fishing competitions around Maltese coasts, collaborating with these clubs for many years.
A number of alien fish species including the Cocoa damselfish, the Dory snapper, the Indopacific Sergeant and the Niger hind have also been documented through ongoing collaboration between the recreational fishing clubs and the CBRG-UM.
In particular, Sandra Agius Darmanin, a researcher within the CBRG-UM, has been closely monitoring this type of fishing for the last six years, as part of her doctoral research, to assess and identify catches, fishing methods and to evaluate the effectiveness of catch and release practice endorsed by all the clubs.
Such practice involves keeping the fish alive in special long nets called keep nets and releasing them back at the end of the competition – practice that should be adopted by all recreational shore fishermen. The most frequently caught fish are the Mediterranean rainbow wrasse, the annular bream and the two banded seabream.
Competitions by various recreational fishing clubs are held regularly around the coast all year round with total catches equating to 0.06% of the official annual commercial catch for the species targeted. During the last two years, Agius Darmanin has seen an effort by each club and especially by the NFSAM to reduce fish mortality during competitions with preliminary results indicating that such efforts are proving effective. Exploratory research on catches by recreational fishermen has also been carried out and the outcomes are currently being analysed.
Increasing outcomes from this research have been presented at various international conferences including the CIESM Congress in Kiel and the ICES conference in Riga and published in the Journal of Fisheries Management and Ecology. Such long pending gap in knowledge linked to recreational fishing is now fast filling up through this dedicated scientific work, thus being appreciated from local to European level.
The collaboration for conservation of marine biodiversity allows stakeholders to learn from the scientific process while working closely with conservation scientists. It is also the way forward to ensure effective sustainable management of this growing sport in respect of local coastal species diversity. Such original, necessary and fruitful research, benefits from the enthusiasm of recreational fishermen and from the support of dedicated Bicref NGO volunteers.