The Pescatourism is a relatively new concept of merging tourism with fisheries. Its intention is to supplement incomes of fishermen and their families in the situation of declining living resources of the sea and to provide an attractive activity for tourists visiting the sea coast. Pescatourism should be considered different activity from fisheries tourism, or recreational fishing (including charter fishing), which usually denote angling. It also contributes to the education of the society and public awareness about the state and problems of the marine sector, including ecosystems, and experiencing the traditional fishing culture. This new activity first stared in Italy in 1982 and soon spread to other Mediterranean countries. Pescatourism can be considered a branch of sustainable tourism and an activity parallel to agrotourism.

Some ECOMERS members co-authored an overview of pescatourism (and related activities) in European countries (Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Germany) with additional examples from elsewhere. Chances for implementing pescatourism in other countries are analysed (Turkey, Algeria, Poland). Despite all these positive features, it can easily be a commercial activity which does not provide any benefits to fishers and sustainability of marine living resources if the licence right is given to charter operators rather than to fishers.

Link to the review published in December 2016

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the world's largest and oldest conservation union, made up of national governments and NGOs. It is probably best known for the Red List which indicates the conservation status of thousands of species of plants and animals which have been assessed by experts into Specialist Groups (SGs) under the umbrella of the Species Survival Commission (SSC). The Groupers & Wrasses Specialist Group (GWSG), which specializes on the valuable reef-associated groupers of the world and contains many of the world's grouper experts, met in the past six days in Faial island, Azores, Portugal to assess all 164 species in this group globally.

Patrice Francour, member of the GWSG, has had in charge to review the species of the Mediterranean Sea.