As stated in the Regulation No. 1380/2013 on the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), the European Union (EU) should ensure that the exploitation of marine resources restores and maintains stocks above levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) by 2015 whenever possible or by 2020 at the latest. In fisheries, MSY is defined as the maximum catch that can be removed from a population over an indefinite period (Maunder, 2008). The MSY target proves specially challenging in mixed Mediterranean fisheries, where more than a hundred commercial species are landed (Lleonart and Maynou, 2003). As each species has specific MSYs, it is extremely difficult to regulate the fishing mortality for each of them independently (Ratz et al., 2007; Mackinson et al., 2009; Guillen et al., 2013), notably when the dynamics of these species may, in turn, be influenced by the environmental (i.e., climate) and fishing impacts (Mueter and Megrey, 2006). Achieving the MSY goal, therefore, is not an easy task because many different contrasting socioeconomic and ecological interests need to be confronted. At the practical level, the main constraints arise when maximizing yields demands socially unacceptable management measures implying drastic reductions of fishing exploitation rates. In order to minimize the negative effect of these measures while balancing the contrasting interests at play, it is essential to work with the active participation of the different actors involved in fisheries assessment and management (scientists, fishermen, and policy-makers).

The EU Regulation also sets out that the objective of sustainable exploitation of marine biological resources is more effectively achieved through a multiannual approach to fisheries management, establishing as a priority multiannual plans (MAPs) reflecting the specificities of different fisheries. The MAPs should be based on scientific, technical, and economic advice and contain conservation measures to restore and maintain fish stocks above the MSY. Wherever possible, the MAPs should cover multiple stocks where those are jointly exploited. The MAPs should also establish the framework for the sustainable exploitation of stocks and marine ecosystems concerned, defining clear time-frames, and safeguard mechanisms for unforeseen developments. The Regulation also states that the MAPs should be adopted in consultation with Advisory Councils, operators in the fishing industry, scientists, and other stakeholders having an interest in fisheries management.

Together with the MSY and MAP approaches, the new CFP contains several other measures (e.g., fish recovery areas, landing obligation, and regionalization), directed to guarantee the ecological and socio-economic sustainability of fisheries. According to all these tenets, the new CFP is moving, in line with the current worldwide global trend (García et al., 2003; Pikitch et al., 2004; Link, 2013), toward the ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM). With this new perspective, the CFP wants to avoid past failures of fisheries management based on monospecific assessment models (Jennings and Rice, 2011; Kvamsdal et al., 2016). Contrary to these models, the EAFM focuses on the need to make trade-offs among environmental, social, and economic objectives explicit to all stakeholders and to better inform decision-making (Jennings and Rice, 2011). Within the current framework of the EAFM, harvest strategies and harvest control rules (HCRs) have become an important tool, increasingly adopted to deal with uncertainty and ecosystem considerations, and to relieve management decisions from short-term political pressure (Kvamsdal et al., 2016). A harvest strategy should specify a process for monitoring and conducting assessments of the biological and economic conditions of the fishery as well as HCRs that control the intensity of fishing activity according to those fishery conditions (Dowling et al., 2008). The introduction of HCRs into modern fisheries management has led to a more complex framework and difficult policy choices, but has substantial benefits such as forcing political decisions to forsake short-term gains for long-term objectives (Deroba and Bence, 2008; Punt, 2010; Kvamsdal et al., 2016). There are different definitions, and even many types and configurations, of HCRs (for reviews, see Deroba and Bence, 2008; Punt, 2010; Kvamsdal et al., 2016). In short, HCRs are explicit guidelines to prevent future stock collapses and allow rebuilding of stocks that are already depleted (Kvamsdal et al., 2016). The success of HCRs is generally enhanced by involvement of stakeholders in the definition of the problem, including assumptions, and co-management (Dichmont et al., 2010). HCRs vary as a result of differences in governance needs and frameworks, but also the unique attributes, histories, and management requirements of each fishery (Kvamsdal et al., 2016). In consequence, the development of harvest strategies with HCRs is strongly related to the main tenets of the new EU CFP such as MAPs, regionalization and MSY target.

The Myfish project (myfishproject.eu/), financed by the EU Seventh Framework Programme, was aimed at analyzing the MSY target and MAP approach contemplated within the new CFP and thus to the delineation of harvest strategies including HCRs. The end result of the project was to construct an operational framework for the implementation of the MSY target as a tool for the future management of European fish stocks. The social dimension formed an integral part of the project whereby the cooperation with relevant stakeholders took place throughout its development to ensure that the management measures proposed were socially acceptable and desirable. The project analyzed five different regional case studies distributed from the Baltic in the north to the Mediterranean in the south. The Mediterranean case study was further split into two different areas, the Balearic Islands and the Aegean Sea in the western and eastern basin, respectively.

The Balearic Islands are one of the most distant insular areas in the Mediterranean, being separated from the Iberian Peninsula by depths of 2,000 m except in the Ibiza Channel (the nearest point between both coastlines) where the maximum depths are 800 m. A comprehensive comparison including different aspects such as geomorphology, habitats, fisheries, and exploitation state of resources and ecosystems between the Balearic Islands and the adjacent coast of the Iberian Peninsula, concluded that the Archipelago should be maintained as an independent unit for assessment and management purposes in the western Mediterranean (Quetglas et al., 2012).

In this paper, we present the regional implementation plan (RIP) for demersal fisheries of the Balearic Islands constructed in the framework of the Myfish project in close collaboration with the most relevant local stakeholders. By definition, the implementation plan constitutes a harvest strategy, including HCRs, aimed at achieving sustainable fisheries in line with Regulation 1380/2013 while balancing contrasting interests (ecosystem, economic, and social). Firstly, the work describes the main fisheries affected by the plan and provides stock assessments to know the exploitation status of the main target species in order to set up the current scenario in the study area. Secondly, alternative management scenarios directed toward maximizing catch and profits while considering societal objectives were evaluated by means of bio-economic models. Thirdly, a set of socially acceptable management measures were provided based on the previous modeling and a constant feed-back with stakeholders. Finally, a monitoring scheme is outlined to assess the progresses of the proposed management actions. The study is intended to be used as a first step toward the definition of MAPs in European fisheries in the study area and a working example of the CFP implementation in the Mediterranean.

The RIP for the Balearic Islands (western Mediterranean) was developed during the 4 years of the Myfish project (2012–2015) in tight collaboration between the scientists working in the project and the main local stakeholders involved in fisheries management: (i) the Fishermen Association; and (ii) the General Directorate of Fisheries of the Government. The collaboration of these two stakeholders included many meetings at local scale, attending different international meetings hold within the project, provision of fisheries data, facilitating cooperation, and feed-back with fishermen and participation in producing all relevant reports, scientific papers, and related material (e.g., DST, see below). The non-governmental organization (NGO) Oceana (oceana.org) published a report entitled Proposal for a responsible fishing in the Balearic Islands (Carreras and Cornax, 2011) in the form of five different leaflets including: (i) a global view of the local fisheries; (ii) recreational fisheries; (iii) small-scale fisheries; (iv) marine protected areas; and (v) bottom trawl fisheries. This material has also been analyzed and some proposals included in the RIP, which is therefore underpinned by the four main pillars of fisheries management (Aanesen et al., 2014; Röckmann et al., 2015): scientists, fishermen, policy-makers, and NGOs.

The RIP summarizes the main results of the Myfish project from the Balearic Islands case study. Being the main project aim to provide an operational framework for the implementation of the MSY concept in European waters, the following steps were undertaken to produce the RIP: (i) characterization of the relevant fisheries (fishing tactics, landings, CPUEs); (ii) description of the main fishing grounds; (iii) assessment of the stock status of the target species; (iv) bioeconomic analysis of the main fisheries to maximize economic yields and societal objectives; (v) produce Decision Support Tables (DSTs) as guidelines for managers; (vi) fish price analysis to improve the fisheries profitability; (vii) delineate management proposals to achieve the MSY target; and (viii) establish a monitoring scheme to assess the progresses of the RIP. A brief, general description of the analyses and methodologies used, together with the main results obtained, in all these steps are given below (for further details, see Myfish-RIP-WestMed-EN.pdf). Altogether, this RIP constitutes a harvest strategy for multispecies demersal fisheries from the western Mediterranean with defined objectives, targets, limits (thresholds), and clear management control rules aimed at optimizing socioeconomic and ecological objectives in the framework of Regulation No. 1380/2013.

The present RIP is focused on the main demersal commercial fisheries from the Balearic Islands, the bottom trawl (BTF) and small-scale (SSF) fisheries. The BTF landings account for 59% in terms of biomass and 64% in terms of incomes, while those of the SSF account for 20% in biomass and 27% in incomes. Owing to the importance of recreational fisheries in such an important tourist destination and its interactions with the professional fisheries, general information from available studies on this fishing practice, together with management measures, were also included.

Although the Balearic Islands are constituted by four main islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera), most of the analyses presented here were done using exclusively data from Mallorca because: (i) the reliability and availability of its fishery statistics is much better than those from the remaining islands; and (ii) its landings represent about 75% of the total Balearics landings.

Recent reviews have revealed the serious overfishing of most Mediterranean stocks (Colloca et al., 2013; European Commission, 2014; Vasilakopoulos et al., 2014), which is in contrast with the improvement observed in other European areas (European Commission, 2014). The reasons for such a contrasting situation probably lay in the governance systems of these regions rather than in the nature of their resources (Smith and Garcia, 2014). Fisheries management in the Mediterranean has been ineffective, necessitating urgent reforms of the management measures aiming to guarantee the sustainability of resources. This reform should not only focus on reducing the exploitation rate and on improving selectivity (Colloca et al., 2013; Vasilakopoulos et al., 2014) but also on the political and socioeconomic changes beyond fishery management (Smith and Garcia, 2014). The new EU CFP constitutes an excellent opportunity to introduce the changes needed for such a reform, as it has as a main objective ensuring that fishing activities are environmentally sustainable in the long-term by means of the implementation of the EAFM. This approach demands the development of management strategies for the entire social and ecological system, where humans are a fundamental part of the ecosystem (Ramirez-Monsalve et al., 2016). Managing human activities should be organized at the appropriate geopolitical level matching the scale of the ecosystem, hence organizing marine management at the regional level (van Hoof, 2015). Harvest strategies, including HCRs, lie at the heart of these management developments, and can facilitate a fisheries governance system where regulators and fishers work together to decide on overall harvest (Kvamsdal et al., 2016).

In this paper, we outlined a harvest strategy for the multispecific demersal fisheries from the Balearic Islands (western Mediterranean) aimed at optimizing socioeconomic and ecosystem objectives in the framework of Regulation N° 1380/2013. This harvest strategy is therefore focused on the general objective of the new CFP to achieve the sustainable exploitation of marine living resources establishing multiannual plans under the regionalization principle.

To our view, the most urgent measure for fisheries management in the Mediterranean should be a clear determination of law enforcement by riparian countries, which would probably do unnecessary implementing new, more restrictive regulations than the currently existing ones. It is a non-sense setting fishing regulations if its fulfillment will not be controlled, as occurs, for instance, with the limitation of maximum gear power for bottom trawlers, the maximum length of nets for the small-scale fishery, and the conservation of maërl grounds.

The Mediterranean context (multispecies, multifleet) demands specific, bespoke measures suited to differences in the exploitation state, not only among the main stocks but also among different regions (regionalization principle). Managing human activities should be organized at the appropriate geopolitical level matching the scale of the ecosystem, hence organizing marine management at the regional level (van Hoof, 2015). Differential effort reductions in line with the status of each single stock should be used (Table 1), with the fishing exploitation focusing on healthier stocks until the recovery of the most impacted ones. Owing to its high overexploitation, stronger measures should be enforced for hake and even a recovery plan might be considered. In addition, the ecosystem-based fisheries management must integrate not only the main target stocks, but also relevant by-catch species (Ordines et al., 2014) and take into account the conservation of the habitats present on the fishing grounds (Ordines et al., 2015).

In the Balearic Islands (GSA05), the fishing effort has remained relatively low as compared to that in the nearby areas (Quetglas et al., 2012). The all-time maximum number of bottom trawlers in Mallorca, for instance, has been 70 units in 1977 and presently (2014) there are only 28 trawlers and some vessels leave the fishery every year. These values are clearly very far from the total number of vessels in GSA06, the adjacent area of the Iberian Peninsula where even some individual ports have more trawlers than all the ports of Mallorca combined. Trawl fishing exploitation in GSA05 is much lower than in GSA06, with the density of trawlers around the Balearic Islands being one order of magnitude lower than in adjacent waters (Massutí and Guijarro, 2004). As a result, the demersal resources and ecosystems in GSA05 are in a healthier state than in GSA06, which is reflected in Quetglas et al. (2012), Ordines (2015): (i) the size-structure of the main commercial stocks; (ii) the higher abundance and diversity of vulnerable species such as elasmobranchs; and (iii) the presence of some sensitive benthic habitats, some of them acting as essential fish habitats, which overlap with traditional fishing grounds. These differences among areas should be taken into account for fisheries management, avoiding the use of general measures for all areas. This is again in line with the regionalization principle and demands a shift in the modus operandi of the CFP from a traditional centralized top-down, command-control approach toward more regional-specific management which should be, in turn, developed and implemented with stakeholders in a spirit of co-management (Eliasen et al., 2015).

Despite the fishing effort of the BTF has remained relatively low in the Balearic Islands compared to nearby areas, the fishing exploitation has produced noticeable effects on the main demersal resources. As a result of fishing, some target stocks shifted from an early period of under-exploitation to over-exploitation during the late 1970s or early 1980s (Quetglas et al., 2013). This change altered the population resilience of those stocks and brought about an increase in the sensitivity of its dynamics to the climate variability. These results reveal that the marine ecosystems from the Balearic Islands are also sensitive to changing environmental conditions, an issue of paramount importance in the framework of the current climate change. Consequently, the putative effects of global change should also be considered for regional fisheries management which, in turn, will demand an adaptive approach to face those changing conditions. In this sense, the ecosystem-based management is highly-equipped for climate change adaptation (Ogier et al., 2016). As multiple climate-driven changes can induce hard-to-reverse shifts in regional ecosystems, the EAFM becomes a necessity rather than a precautionary approach (Marzloff et al., 2016).

In spite of representing the 85% of EU fleets (European Commission, 2014), SSF are under-represented, or directly neglected, in fisheries assessment and management agendas at national and supranational levels (e.g., Guyader et al., 2013). In the Myfish project, we have included a first in-depth analysis of the SSF from the Balearic Islands using data from official statistics (Quetglas et al., 2016), which are known to be underestimated in the Mediterranean owing to unreported catches (Coll et al., 2014; Pauly et al., 2014). As a consequence, output values of the stock status indicators and the bioeconomic modeling should be taken with care beyond tracking trends in the fishery. Sales of fish outside the official market are especially important in species with high commercial value such as dentex, red scorpionfish, and spiny lobster (Carreras et al., 2015), which are precisely the stocks showing the worst exploitation status. Unreported catches may result in underestimation of fishing mortality, leading to biased stock assessments that hamper achieving a sustainable exploitation (Punt et al., 2006; Bellido et al., 2011). This reinforces the need to sensitize fishermen about the importance of providing the best data possible to scientists in order to help improving the stock assessment and management. The problem of the underreported catches is compounded by the recreational fisheries, which share some of the main SSF target species. In the highly touristic Balearic Islands, where recreational catches represent 43% of the commercial ones (Morales-Nin et al., 2015), this activity might affect seriously the exploitation state of some target stocks. Recreational and competitive spear fishing have a sizeable impact on the depletion of large rocky bottom littoral fish (e.g., Epinephelus marginatus) and contributes to the non-profitability of some gears used by the SSF (Coll et al., 2004). Moreover, some of the recreational catches are illegally commercialized, affecting the fish demand of the SSF as well (Merino et al., 2008).

The main aim of fisheries management is the sustainable exploitation of living resources, which also requires the conservation of marine ecosystems (Worm et al., 2009). This is a very important issue in the Balearic Islands where, as already mentioned, the red algae beds (maërl) overlap with traditional fishing grounds of both the BTF and SSF. Consequently, a proper implementation of the EAFM in the area should make compatible the conservation of these habitats and the sustainability of fisheries. This is a great challenge owing to the strong decrease in the number of fishing vessels observed in the Balearic Islands during the last decades. In case such a decrease is maintained, it might lead the fishing sector to its final disappearance, which seems not too far away in the case of bottom trawlers (Figure 6). Another option would be to stabilize the fleet in such a low number of trawlers that it will ensure the sustainable exploitation of the resources. In this second case, however, fisheries management should also ensure that such a low number of vessels will also allow the viability and maintenance of the fish market chain, from fishers to consumers. Needless to mention the maintenance of local traditions, culture, and gastronomy within the current framework of a globalized world, especially in an area so highly dependent on tourism as the Balearic Islands. Therefore, urgent measures must be taken to improve both the profitability of commercial fishing and its attractiveness to young people, so as to guaranty the maintenance of sustainable fisheries and the protection of the marine environment.

Although the ecosystem-based management is complex and difficult to operationalize, whereby progresses have been somewhat limited, the steps taken so far are worthy for future progresses (Link and Browman, 2017). The lack of proper datasets is no more an excuse to avoid implementing the EAFM since it is feasible with the information, tools and approaches currently available (Patrick and Link, 2015). This study is a first step toward the implementation of the EAFM in the Balearic Islands by means of the development of a harvest strategy and it is intended to be a working example of co-management (fishers, policy-makers, and scientists) in the Mediterranean in the framework of the new EU CFP.

All authors participated actively in the Myfish project and the development of this Regional Implementation Plan (RIP). Scientists performed all data analyses (AQ, GM, JG, FO, BG, PO, and EM). Stakeholders (AG and AMG) provided information for data analyses and expertise for interpreting results and designing the RIP. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.