The potential effects of COVID-19 lockdown and the following restrictions on the status of eight target stocks in the Adriatic Sea

The COVID-19 pandemic had major impacts on the seafood supply chain, also reducing fishing activity. It is worth asking if fish stocks in Mediterranean Sea, which most cases have been overfishing conditions for many years, may benefitted from reduction pressure. present work first attempt to make a quantitative evaluation of effort due and, consequently, its impact stocks, focusing Adriatic Sea subareas. Eight commercially exploited target (common sole, common cuttlefish, spottail mantis shrimp, European hake, red mullet, anchovy, sardine, and deepwater pink shrimp) were evaluated with surplus production model, separately fitting data each stock until 2019 2020. Results 2020 models terms biomass mortality statistically compared bootstrap resampling technique assess their statistical difference. Most showed small but significant improvement both at sea mortality, except cuttlefish an increase (only cuttlefish). After reviewing potential co-occurrence environmental management-related factors, we concluded that only case sole can effective related restrictions be detected, because it fleet whose activity remained far lower than expectations entire