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Marine Recreational Fishing (MRF) is a highly attended complex activity, extremely evident along the coastlines, and mainly practiced among riparian communities. For that reason, this activity plays an important role to effectively contribute to the collective well-being, both from the social and economic points of view. However, it may negatively affect the fish stocks and the marine environment in general, mainly due to the removal of biological resources. The growing need to evaluate the magnitude of marine recreational fishing is recognized worldwide, especially in the last decade, when inclusive fishing programs began to focus their attention on this fishing activity. Based on its unexpected evidence and its wider repercussion on social behavior, the COVID-19 pandemic is considered by the scientific community as one of the most unique opportunities to better understand the social phenomenon and their repercussion on the environment. In this work will be reported very preliminary results on the consistency of marine recreational fishing in the case study of the Marche region (Italy). Number of recreational fishers and fishing effort were estimated through a telephone survey conducted in the Italian side of the Northern Adriatic Sea (FAO GFCM Geographical Sub Area 17) by interviewing 580 households. The sampling strategy also included a recall survey, which was carried out every month on a list of recruited fishers. In this manner, additional information was collected, such as detailed fishing effort, catches, and expenditures. In addition, biological data of catches were estimated through several on-site surveys. The information collected from January and December 2020 was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of social restrictions and access to marine places, inevitably impacting on marine recreational fishing features, including the biological resources and the related economic aspects.

The sea turtle (Caretta caretta) is the most common sea turtle in the Mediterranean, where incidental catches due to fishing activities are considered the main threat to its conservation. Over 50,000 capture events and likely over 10,000 deaths are estimated to occur in the Italian waters alone. However, current knowledge on the interaction of sea turtles with fishing gears and the implementation of mitigation measures are still poor to hinder the decline of turtle populations in the Mediterranean. In this basin, where fisheries are multispecies, multi-gears and multinational, making demersal fishing activities profitable while preserving sea turtles is a challenge. This study aimed to develop bycatch reducer devices (BRDs) and alternative fishing gears to mitigate the impact of demersal fishing gears on sea turtles: (a) hard and flexible turtle excluder devices (TEDs) were tested in bottom trawling to immediately exclude turtles from the net; (b) visual deterrents (ultraviolet LEDs) were used to illuminate set nets and to alter turtle visual cues, avoiding entanglement during depredation activity. The results showed the different devices did not affect the commercial catch, while bycatch reduction was instead evident. Thus, the study highlights that introducing mitigation measures to reduce sea turtle bycatch in the Mediterranean, where the bycatch of vulnerable species seems as a global issue, can be possible at least in certain areas and periods. Considering fishermen reticence to change the gear traditionally used, determining the optimal gear configuration to minimize commercial loss while reducing bycatch, is the main issue while introducing new technologies. Therefore, a global effort should be done to introduce BRDs in different areas and fisheries of the Mediterranean.