The second meeting of the Common Maritime Agenda for the Black Sea Technical Group (TG) on Sustainable Aquaculture took place online on 3 April 2024. The main objectives of the meeting were to exchange best practices regarding innovative activities on sustainable aquaculture within the region, to create synergies with similar activities within other initiatives, and to transform the group’s decisions into actionable proposals.
Regarding the best practices presented, the 4BIZ project shared their objective to support stakeholders in the Black Sea blue economy, focusing on fisheries, aquaculture, coastal and maritime tourism, and maritime transport. They also referred to a workshop they had organised to present the current state of play of the aquaculture and fisheries sector in the Black Sea countries
The Black Sea Assistance Mechanism introduced the Black Sea Accelerator, which supports sustainable businesses in the regional blue economy. Some of these businesses shared best practices related to sustainable aquaculture, such as a startup from Samsun, Türkiye, which specialises in monitoring seaweed populations and microalgae production, and another business based in Georgia, Batumi, focused on food provisioning for local fish farming.
Moreover, the Technical Group discussed its roadmap, addressing pillars such as governance, capacity building, value chains, and research and innovation. Within each pillar, topics were rated based on their significance and urgency, highlighting key areas for collaborative action.
The Black Sea Assistance Mechanism introduced opportunities for collaboration beyond the Black Sea region, presenting initiatives like the Aquaculture Assistance Mechanism (AAM) and AQUAWEST, Technical Group on sustainable aquaculture in the Western Mediterranean. AAM offers technical support to DG MARE in implementing the EU sustainable aquaculture guidelines, featuring upcoming workshops on regulatory frameworks and spatial planning. AQUAWEST presented its objectives and identified areas of collaboration, inviting participation for subgroup discussions about project ideas and consortia formation.
A sub-group of countries that showed interest in some of the topics discussed, will be created as a proactive effort to address specific interests raised during the meeting uch as: available technologies for the existing species in aquaculture, best practices exchange with EU countries and between countries in the region and available support for local and small-scale producers.
Would you like to follow the progress of this technical group? The Common Maritime Agenda for the Black Sea website has a newly established page that will serve as a one-stop-shop for every news related to Black Sea SustAQUA, the CMA Sustainable Aquaculture Technical Group. Check it out here.