Crossroads at Sea: Implications of Marine Policy Initiatives on the Sustainability of the Maltese Fishing Sector

This thesis explores how the Maltese fishing sector has been affected by the regulatory framework emanating from the European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and the Habitats' Directive. An interdisciplinary approach was adopted to identify how the multi-scalar governance structures and management system have influenced the social, economic, political and environmental elements of the Maltese fisheries sector. Management frameworks hailing from the CFP and the Habitats' Directive were analysed to elicit knowledge about the resource governance, socio-economic and socio-ecological resilience, and sustainable livelihoods in the context of small-scale and artisanal fisheries. By focusing on Malta's two main fishing villages - Marsaxlokk and Mgarr (Gozo), I seek to highlight how the ratification of the various policies has affected the sustainability of the heterogeneous fishing communities that inhabit the island. To do this, I have used a grounded theory approach to investigate the incremental implications deriving from the policy changes dawning onto the endogenous Maltese fishing patterns since EU accession in 2004. The research, which is based on a year of contact, interaction and participant observation with fishers, explores and describes how fishers experience and respond to conservation and neo-liberal policy shifts, and such findings are represented through a series of publishable case studies (chapters). In Chapter 4, I describe how the capitalistic nature of the Bluefin tuna fishery policy has facilitated the plight of the artisanal fishing sector due to privatisation schemes that enabled the concentration of quotas into fewer hands. In Chapter 5, I investigate the role of the Maltese open-access fisheries policy on the livelihood of fishers, and ultimately, in Chapter 6, I look into the sustainability implications of marine protected areas on the inshore fishing communities. Through these case studies, I provide a wide-ranging and analytical outlook of how small-scale fishers are implicated in the dynamics of fisheries management and governance. Based on these observations I provide feasible context-specific recommendations for the continuation of small-scale fishing communities.