MedPAN workshop on “Monitoring for Managing Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)” Tirana, Albania, 25-27 November 2014

The Network of Marine Protected Area Managers in the Mediterranean (MedPAN network), one of the partners of TUDAV, organized a regional experience-sharing workshop held in Tirana, Albania from 25 to 27 November 2014.

This year the workshop addressed “monitoring for managing Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)”. MPA managers were brought together with scientists, fishermen, NGOs and several organizations that work with the marine environment such as RAC/SPA, WWF, IUCN and TUDAV. During the meeting that hosted 138 people from all over the Mediterranean and Europe (Spain, France, Italy, Monaco, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia, Greece, Algeria, Belgium, Turkey, and United Kingdom), monitoring practices in various MPAs towards the Mediterranean were presented and experiences exchanged. After that, participants discussed the idea to ‘promote’ specific protocols to harmonize data collection throughout the system of MPAs. Participants were taken to Cap Radoni to visit the pilot MPA in Albania and new attempts concerning the establishment of MPAs along the pristine Albanian coasts were presented and discussed. CoCoNet, a EU 7th framework project, was also presented at the workshop as well as the Albanian experience in the framework of CoCoNet project. The TUDAV documentary film “We Need More MPAs” was also shown at the closure of the meeting.