As announced by the Municipality of Herceg Novi, their vice-president Danijela Đurović presented the ADRINET project and the role of the municipality in it, and project manager Angelo Vilani from the University of Bari presented the main goals and activities of the project, paying special attention to the problem of "ghost fishing" danger for the fish in the Adriatic Sea.
"Ghost fishing refers to nets, weirs and all other fishing gear that is lost and left on the seabed. Discovering and extracting this equipment as well as placing chips on the nets by the fishermen who are interested in participating in the project is the backbone of the ADRINET project," said Vilani.
According to him, the project is conceived as a joint effort by the academic community, local government, citizen associations and all those social actors that can contribute in the protection of the Adriatic underwater and envisages the development of manually dealing with fisheries, signing a memorandum of cooperation and adopting management strategies for the coastline. "The project will also enable the linking and exchanging of fishermen's experience from Montenegro, Italy, and Albania," it is said in the statement.
The Head of the Office for International Cooperation of the Municipality Herceg Novi, Simonida Kordić, said that the protection of the Adriatic Sea, as a common space and resource, requires the involvement of all relevant social actors, and these cross-border cooperation programs help in achieving this goal.
In what state the seabed of Herceg Novi is in and what challenges sports fishermen and divers encounter, was shown to the audience by Dejan Drašković from SRK "Mamula" and Danijel Đorđević from the Diving Association of Herceg Novi.
"The problem of the lost fishing gear, and especially nets, is largely present in our country," they said. In addition, that the "ghost fishing" endangers the fish stock it also represents a potential danger to all those who are engaged in underwater fishing or scuba diving at such locations.
The ADRINET project is implemented under the Interreg CBC program Italy-Albania-Montenegro, with the participation of six project partners from the mentioned countries. The leading partner is the University of Bari, and the municipalities of Castro from Italy and Vlora from Albania, the University of Tirana and the Institute for Marine Biology from Kotor (University of Montenegro) participate in the project apart from the Municipality of Herceg Novi.
Text by CdM, on October 23rd, 2018, read more at CdM
