The Blackspot Seabream Fishery in the Strait of Gibraltar: Lessons and Future Perspectives of Shared Marine Resource

The Blackspot Seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo) is one of the most important commercially exploited fish species for the Spanish and Moroccan fleets which operate in the Strait of Gibraltar. In recent years, the landings of Blackspot Seabream in the main ports have decreased significantly with respect to previous periods of maximum catches, which makes it necessary to properly assess the abundance before establishing a management plan to make the fishery sustainable over time. In this chapter, we describe three different approaches to assess the abundance of this species in the Strait of Gibraltar. The results of three approaches tested (LCA/VPA, Gadget model, and SimFish model) point out that from 2010 the stock is kept at very low levels that oscillate between 900 and 1600 t, which supposes that the total biomass is between a 16% and 29% of the potential biomass. Additionally, the reference point values estimated by LCA/VPA and Gadget (F0.1 = 0.12–0.17) imply a clear overexploitation of the resource which is reinforced by the SimFish model results indicating that at least the 64% of abundance variation is a consequence of the fishery component.