Project proposal - Interreg Med, Defining Fishing protected areas and fish stock - (Very urgent)

Dear Colleagues,

I'm helping Miguel Soares to develop a project application for the Interreg Med funding:

http://interreg-med.eu/en/first-call-for-project-proposals/

The project proposal is almost ready, but unfortunatelly the partner from Spain dropped out today, thus we are searching for an alternative one. The deadline is very short (2nd Nov) and we're urgently looking for an entity (public, private, NGO or research) willing to step in and work with fishermen in Spain (on one selected site). Below is a short abstract of the project:

Defining Fishing protected areas and fish stock recovery areas has been repeatedly proven as one of the most important practice in sustainable fisheries. Here, we propose to create a collaborative platform and to establish a transnational, integrative and transdisciplinary Mediterranean network to redefine the paradigms of sustainable fishery management. Specifically, we intend to develop a bottom-up approach that would implement both the fishermen local ecological knowledge and cutting edge scientific evolutionary genomics approaches to provide the insight in fisheries population connectivity and adaptation at the deepest resolution possible nowadays. This knowledge is of crucial importance for defining marine protected areas relevant for fishery management. Involvement of fishery stakeholders and local fishing communities, NGOs, and scientists steeming from the fishery, social and evolutionary sciences into this multilog, along with joined development of working platform ensures full commitment of all of the interested parties. Therefore this project develops tools to bridge substantial existing knowledge and communication gaps in the fishery management and thus extensively contributes to the sustainability of Mediterranean fisheries.

The project application is nearly completed and a number of partners from the Mediterranean countries involved. But there is still a chance to discuss a more detailed input from the Spanish partner. In case you would be interested to join or can recommend your colleagues, please contact directly Miguel Soares <msoares@geomar.de>

Thank you for your time and consideration.