 My name is Adriano De Iana and I've been living here for a long time. Before me, my father caught us, and also my grandfather. We all fish to earn money to eat. We can't not fish. Unfortunately, now we fish very little. Once we fished a lot. Adriano's family have been fishing for European eel in Sardinia since 1952. Adriano is only one of the few hundred fishes across the Mediterranean who rely on eel as a source of income and livelihood. He, along with many others, has witnessed the drastic decline that eel local stocks have undergone in all eel habitats. The situation is so dire that experts assessed the status of the species as critical and the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed European eel as critically endangered. European eel has a truly extraordinary life cycle. After hatching in the Sargasso Sea in the Caribbean, eel larvae cross the Atlantic, drifting in the Gulf Stream current for over a year. Once they reach the continental platform, they undergo a metamorphosis to transparent glass eels. At this stage, they enter estuaries, canals and lagoons, making their way to upper river stretches and lakes with a distribution range from the Mediterranean region to northern Europe. Across the Mediterranean Sea, eel habitat is predominantly coastal lagoons. Eels grow in freshwater for up to 20 years and when they reach sexual maturity, they descend to coastal waters, travel across the Mediterranean to the Strait of Gibraltar and back across the Atlantic to the Sargasso Sea where they spawn and die. All along their colossal migrations, eels face major threats, both environmental and human-induced. Global changes, habitat loss and degradation, pollution, overfishing, illegal trafficking are all major threats to the species. Eels are used to catch eels, for example, or with a battery. But fishing a lot and then bringing it to the market, the fish, to make it pay for a tenth of what it's worth, is not very smart. It's better to fish less and probably earn more. 90% of eels were sold out. I mean, about 10% of eels were sold out. There weren't many like the old ones. I don't know what kind of life they lived, but they changed their way of life. In the days, they changed their way of life and their ability to act. In the past, eels used to live in deeper waters. Because it was cold, eels used to live in deeper waters. But now, eels live in very shallow waters. Because they live in deeper waters, eels live in deeper waters, and they take more lives. These impacts have likely had a cumulative effect, driving the eel global stock towards critical status. It's crucial that all the stakeholders, all of them, fishermen, hydropower managers, the authorities, regulating both the quality and quantity, all the connectivity of coastal nagoons to the sea, it is important that they all work together with the ultimate goals, minimize the threats and remove the obstacle preventing a significant fraction of the reproductive stock to swim back to the oceans and reach the spawning areas in the sub-gank sources. The loss of resource and the consequent reduction in catches contribute to significant economic losses for fishers. This is coupled with important losses in the traditional knowledge, management traditions and environmental stewardship that fishers themselves provide and which have proven crucial to maintaining lagoon ecosystems over the years. The challenge, therefore, needs to be addressed both at the global level by identifying solutions towards the recovery of the eel population and at the local level by determining concrete actions required in each specific situation. In the Mediterranean, a period of productivity is produced because less and less anguishes come in and the quality of such lagoon is decreasing due to the presence of nutrients in excess, due to the presence of metals, due to the presence of pesticides. Consequently, we must work to maintain the quality of these habitats, reducing the entry of contaminants, reducing the fishing pressure, increasing connectivity and, above all, the quality of the water in these habitats. The critical situation calls for urgent protection and a coordinated management strategy for the recovery of the species. That's why the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean ran a dedicated research program on European eel in nine Mediterranean countries. The program collected data on management and protection measures for stock recovery at the national and local levels, as well as information on eel habitats, on the biological features of local stocks and on eel fisheries and aquaculture. This provided the basis for a multi-annual management plan for European eel fisheries in Mediterranean Sea, recently adopted by the GFCM members. The results of the research program highlighted that, despite the impacts of fishing, fishers are the guardians of these habitats and can actively contribute to their conservation, benefiting eel and all other living resources. Collaboration between fishers and scientists could provide a winning strategy through exchanges of knowledge on the eel resource and its environment, as well as cooperation for long-term monitoring and joint implementation of measures for stock recovery. The original approach of the GFCM Commission is that we want to do it with fishers in the sense that we try to provide a resource but also to provide economic activities that, naturally, will have to be redimensioned, but this has already happened because if the resource is rare, the activity has already been redimensioned. I think that you never end up learning. So, when you work in contact with researchers, they teach you a lot of things and we see a lot of them in contact with nature. But we don't know many technical things. Contacting with these people teaches us a lot of things. As for the scientific research group, we have a group of scientists who are very close to the scientific research group. They come to the water, and the scientists are very close to them. As for the lake, the lake is very happy to be able to participate in this project. We want to take this opportunity. Going forward, the GFCM will expand on the research program through a second phase which will further explore the possibility of management models adapted to local realities. It will also undertake a socio-economic study on eel fisheries in the Mediterranean. Establishing a regional monitoring network and involving joint efforts of fishers and scientists could be a key tool to help assess the state of the eel stock and the impacts of current and future management measures. Adjustments may be required in the short term, but the ultimate ambitious goal is to ensure the conservation of this iconic species and the preservation of the heritage and artisanal fisheries of coastal communities all over the Mediterranean. Our interest is to look at these places. If we don't look at them, then we'll have to look for another job. If we like another job.