The regionalization process promoted by the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) enabled the formulation of a new governance arrangement at the sub-national regional level of the Northern Adriatic Sea (NAS). Given the potential for dominating narratives to foster simplified solutions for fishery management, the article sought to analyze discourse formations across Italian Regional Fishery Departments (RFDs) of the NAS. A discourse analysis based on the Discursive Agency Approach (DAA) delineated the discursive strategies, while a weak vs strong sustainability narrative was adopted to broadly group stakeholders into discourse coalitions. The results showed the presence of a dominating narrative in RFD settings, prioritizing the economic growth of the fishery sector - particularly the trawling industry - over current environmental concerns. The study points to a possibly increasing dominance of weak sustainability narratives in the Italian NAS and invites for stakeholders' representation to significantly broaden and diversify, enabling the development of multifaceted solutions to the NAS crisis.
Rigid fisheries management frameworks often leave fishermen with limited possibilities and incentives to adjust the selectivity of their gears to the specific fishing conditions. Implementation of the landing obligation in European fisheries emphasizes fishermen's need for flexibility in which gear to use to be able to match the selectivity of the gear to the quota available. How fishermen can play an important role in facilitating a more regionalised and flexible technical regulation by actively participating in the development of gears and contributing to the scientific documentation of their selectivity is discussed. Perspectives in the proposed technical regulation for EU fisheries and the regionalization in the 2013 Common Fisheries Policy are discussed based on an analysis of the current EU technical regulation. Then a new pathway to address the problem, currently being trialled in Danish fisheries, is discussed. Throughout the article, three themes are discussed: Identifying gear needs, development and testing of gear with fishermen as central actors; how the selectivity of the gear should be documented; and opportunities for faster evaluation of new gear, following the regionalization of the technical measure regulation. The paper concludes that a more flexible system of gear development and evaluation is possible by a) involvement of fishermen in proposing gear adjustments, self-sampling and documenting results following scientific protocols and evaluation, testing a range of designs before scientific testing, and b) open for faster approval of gear use under a regionalized technical regulation regime with annual adjustments of management plans containing the technical regulation.