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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The fourth meeting of the Subregional Committee for the Central Mediterranean (SRC-CM) of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) Scientific Advisory Committee on Fisheries (SAC) was held at FAO headquarters in Rome (Italy), on 21-22 March 2019. The aims of the meeting were to: i) compile relevant information on the status of central Mediterranean fisheries and provide advice to the SAC, including on urgent actions towards sustainability and following the requests made by the Commission, in particular in relation to European hake and deep-water rose shrimp and deep water red shrimps; ii) identify priority topics for the subregion, including in relation to data collection, provision of advice and implementation of management measures, and iii) prepare a draft work plan to address priority issues for the consideration of the SAC. The SRC-CM formulated draft advice on issues related to fisheries in the subregion, including a summary of the status of the stocks, the assessment and management of deep water red shrimp in the eastern-central Mediterranean, the characterization of small-scale fisheries (SSF) and the implementation of the Regional Plan of Action for Small-Scale Fisheries in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (RPOA-SSF), the creation of a GFCM geodatabase of scientific evidence on the presence and distribution of vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs), the implementation of selectivity studies, the implementation of a vulnerability assessment of Mediterranean fisheries to climate change in the central Mediterranean subregion and a detailed work plan for the 2019–2020 intersession.