Lockdown: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected the Fishing Activities in the Adriatic Sea (Central Mediterranean Sea)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought a global socio-economic crisis to almost all sectors including the fishery one. In order to limit the infection, the Governments adopted several containment measures. In Italy, Croatia and Slovenia a lockdown period was imposed from March to May 2020, during which many activities, including restaurants, had to close or limit their business. All of this caused a strong reduction in seafood request and consequently a decrease in fishing activities. The aim of this work is to investigate the indirect effect of the COVID-19 in the Northern and Central Adriatic fleet, by comparing the fishing activities in three periods (before, during and after the lockdown) of 2019 and 2020. The use of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) data allowed us to highlight the redistribution of the fishing grounds of the trawlers, mainly located near the coasts during the 2020 lockdown period, as well as a reduction of about 50% of fishing effort. This reduction resulted higher for the Chioggia trawlers (-80%) and, in terms of fishing effort decrease, the large bottom otter trawl was the fishing segment mainly affected by the COVID-19 event. Moreover, analysing also the landings of the fleet of the Chioggia and of the Venice lagoon fleets it was possible to point out a strong reduction both in landings and profits ranging from -30%, for the small-scale fishery operating at sea, to -85%, for the small bottom otter trawl.