Marine Protected Areas (MPA) aim to protect and conserve marine biodiversity. In order to reduce human impact on marine habitats and species, some activities are thus limited or even prohibited, like fisheries, diving, or tourism related activities. But in addition to the ecological benefits of marine protected areas, socio-economic ones should also be taken into account for MPA management. For example, some fishermen have incomes depending only upon their small scale fisheries (SSF).

In order to integrate these aspects all together within MPA management, the FishMPABlue project was launched. In the first part of the project, a SSF analysis was carried out within and around Mediterranean MPA, which enabled the development of a “toolbox” proposing different governance measures to improve the socio-economic and environmental sustainability of MPA. In the second part (FishMPABlue 2), 11 pilot MPA from 6 countries where selected across the Mediterranean, in which local governance clusters (LGC) gathering MPA managers and fishermen were created. They were asked to choose some measure from the toolbox to apply it. A field study of the MPA was carried out before and after the application of the measures, to assess their efficiency and feasibility. This revealed that MPA have a positive socio-economic effect when co-management occurs between managers and fishermen.

Now, the new part of the project, called FishMPABlue 2 Plus, aims to transfer the governance toolbox approach to 11 new Mediterranean MPA from 5 countries. Two French MPA are involved: Cap d’Ail marine reserve and Pequerolle marine reserve; and ECOSEAS laboratory is the project promotor for this French part. Our objectives are to create LCG for these MPA and to have them engaged to adopt some measures from the toolbox by June 2022.