Ettore Nepote; Cinzia Corinaldesi; Antonio Dell'Anno; Silvestro Greco; Marco Lo Martire; Roberto Danovaro

doi:10.35800/jasm.v10i1.37485

Authors

Ettore Nepote Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dellâ€™Ambiente, UniversitÃ Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy
Cinzia Corinaldesi Dipartimento di Scienze e Ingegneria della Materia, dellâ€™Ambiente ed Urbanistica, UniversitÃ Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy
Antonio Dell'Anno Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dellâ€™Ambiente, UniversitÃ Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy
Silvestro Greco Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, Naples, Italy.
Marco Lo Martire Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dellâ€™Ambiente, UniversitÃ Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy.
Roberto Danovaro Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dellâ€™Ambiente, UniversitÃ Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy. Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, Naples, Italy.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35800/jasm.v10i1.37485

Keywords:

clam harvesting, hydraulic dredging, COVID lockdown, Adriatic Sea

Abstract

The Northern Adriatic Sea is historically subjected to intensive bottom trawling and hydraulic dredging for clam harvesting, which are known to have deleterious effects on benthic habitats. In order to gather information on the destructive impact of hydraulic dredging, we investigated the abundance and assemblage composition of soft-bottom macrofauna in a coastal area of the North Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea), by comparing the year before and the year after the reduction of the fishing effort imposed by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Our results indicate that macrofaunal assemblages changed significantly in abundance and composition. While bivalves doubled their abundance, other opportunistic scavenger taxa decreased or disappeared. Despite dredging intensity decreased more than 50% in 2020, the harvesting of Chamelea gallina increased from 18,706 tons in 2019 to 19,092 tons in 2020. Overall, it could be concluded that the decrease in clam fishing effort imposed by the lockdown resulted in an increase of the yearly clam harvesting. Our study points out that the recovery of soft-bottom macrofaunal assemblages due to the long-term decrease of clam harvesting has potentially important benefits, and that the establishment of long fishing stops, or of fishery restricted areas / marine protected areas could lead to a more sustainable fishery and the potential increase of the clam fishery yields.

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