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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM), at its forty-second session Commission (FAO headquarters, Italy, November 2018), decided to establish a regional research programme towards the sustainable exploitation of rapa whelk (Rapana venosa) in the Black Sea. This programme should support the Working Group on the Black Sea (WGBS) and it is coordinated within the BlackSea4Fish project. It aims to improve scientific, technical and socio-economic knowledge of fisheries exploiting rapa whelk. A roadmap and a work plan were drafted at the session of the WGBS (Bulgaria, July 2018) and were approved by the forty-second session of the Commission. On the occasion of the Forum on Fisheries Science in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (FishForum) (FAO headquarters, Italy, December 2018), two short meetings were held with Black Sea specialists and necessities for the implementation of the work plan were discussed. Two important issues were underlined: i) the elimination of differences in landing data collection programmes currently carried out by most of the Black Sea riparian countries; and ii) fundamental needs such as sampling gear, protocol and sampling period for conducting a harmonized scientific survey-at-sea. This workshop was organized to meet the harmonization needs addressed by the Black Sea specialists within the context of the GFCM BlackSea4Fish project, which supports the implementation of the mid-term strategy (2017–2020) towards the sustainability of Mediterranean and Black Sea fisheries, particularly in relation to its aim of improving regional technical capacity.