A south Mediterranean country's demand on available marine biomass: assessment of Algerian fisheries sustainability

This study focuses on fishing activity, specifically the extraction of marine resources in the Algerian coastal and offshore zones. This sector is expected to meet several objectives and contribute to Algeria's food security. Seafood is a significant source of protein and is highly favoured by Algeria's coastal communities. However, with limited data available describing the biomass that could be exploited, the pressure could eventually increase on a common stock that is shared by all users and is already regarded as poorly studied. Against this backdrop, this work considers the estimation of the marine footprint, which is the ratio between the demand of each fished species, known as the required primary production, and the available biomass in terms of primary production of Algerian fishing waters. The latter is derived from the literature, relying on studies covering the considered area. The main study findings outline a marine footprint ratio that does not exceed 1%, demonstrating a sustainable fishing activity. However, the obtained results, i.e., low marine footprint percentage, may imply that the available marine biomass in the Algerian fishing zones is not fully exploited.