The Adriatic Pit Where the Fish Came Back

The Jabuka/Pomo Pit is a depression between Italy and Croatia where the shallow Adriatic drops to around 200 metres, and it functions as the spawning ground and nursery for hake and Norway lobster across the whole basin. MedReAct, a Rome-based organisation working on Mediterranean recovery, built the case with the Adriatic Recovery Project for closing it to bottom trawling, and in 2017 the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean adopted a Fisheries Restricted Area — the largest marine reserve in the Adriatic, with a core closed to all demersal gear and two surrounding zones of reduced effort. Biomass of commercial species rose sharply inside it and bottom sharks returned, and more than 200 scientists have since called for the closure to be made permanent. MedReAct works on the wider picture too, in a sea where 52% of assessed stocks are overfished and 40% of sharks, rays and chimaeras face extinction.