6TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Belgrade, Sırbistan, 21 - 25 Ekim 2020, ss.18
The Black Sea is one the important sub-areas of the Mediterranean Basin and one of the most
complex ecosystems in the region. The structure of the Black Sea ecosystem differs from the
Mediterranean in that the diversity is low and the dominant groups are different. On the contrary,
the abundance, biomass, and productivity of the Black Sea are higher than the Mediterranean. In
this presentation, riparian countries of the Black Sea (Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey,
and Ukrania) are compared by means of catch statistics, the number of fishing vessels, targeted and
landed species. For this purpose, FishStat Plus - Universal software for fishery statistical time series
data (1950-2018) and Turkish Statistical Institute’s (TurkStat) data were used to generate the long
term landed catch plots. Fishing mortality (F) and exploitation rates (E) were reviewed from
published papers and scientific reports. Among riparian countries, Turkey uses some advantages
such as long coastline, the number of fishing vessels and fishermen, modernized fishing fleet, etc.
Turkey seems obviously leader with numerical domination by the fishing fleet and landings. Black
Sea fishery has a special role in the living marine resources of Turkey. Fish caught in the Black Sea
constitutes approximately 80% of the total production of Turkey. From the marine resource
perspective, European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), European sprat (Sprattus sprattus), Atlantic
bonito (Sarda sarda), bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix), whiting (Merlangius merlangus), red mullet
(Mullus barbatus), and turbot (Scopthalmus maximus) are the most landed species over a long time
period. However, most of these important and traditional marine resources are over-fished by
means of fishing mortality and/or exploitation rate and total landings. In the overall, to solve the
fisheries-related problems in the Black Sea, a basin-wide fishery management perspective joint by all
riparian countries is needed.