Knowledge exchange in sustainable Fisheries management and Aquaculture in the Mediterranean region

The Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) for Egypt, according to Egyptian vision 2030, represents a foothold on the way towards inclusive development. Also, the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (especially SDG 14) urge for effective regulation and management of marine living resources in the context of conservation, food security and resilience to change. The EU has also strongly committed to reversing the trend of declining fish stocks in the Mediterranean (MEDFish4Ever). Apart from enhancing management of artisanal and commercial fisheries, aquaculture also plays an important role in addressing the needs for food of a growing population and ensuring blue jobs (Jobs in fisheries and aquaculture fields). There is no masters’ program in Egypt able to provide a qualified specialist with an effective view regarding fisheries management and aquaculture, sustainability and blue economy aspects. Thus, FishAqu project assembled an international team able to fix this gap and provide highly qualified specialists in fisheries and aquaculture to work in the national/international labour market. FishAqu aims to contribute to the exclusion of the following problems that persist in the education activity in Egypt: - lack of competence-based cooperation between experts, researchers, scientists, teachers and stakeholders, which affects the quality of the educational process and, subsequently, employment of graduates; - training based on obsolete (non-renewable) programs; - assessment of knowledge established in accordance with the requirements of a particular university (lack of national well-formed standards resulting in significant discrepancies between Egyptian practices and international standards); - insufficient use of modern information and communication technologies in the learning process; - insufficient focus on the practical component in existing programs (fisheries management and aquaculture as applied fields strongly depend on hands-on learning to support theoretical learning). Considering the above, the current project aims to improve the educational processes in the knowledge area of fish production or more specifically in fisheries management and aquaculture, promoting capacitation and know-how for qualified jobs aquaculture. Among the major constrains significantly impacting Egypt society, the most important are the following: - over half of the fish consumed globally now comes from aquaculture what highlights the importance of this activity. Most fishery resources around the world, Egyptian resources are illegally overexploited; - without enhanced efforts in the management of wild-capture fisheries, there is a real possibility of a significant decline in fisheries stocks in the near future beyond a point of no return. Management of fisheries in the Mediterranean is particularly challenged for ecological and political reasons; - fisheries is not only limited to captures of fish, but also extends to the fishing of sponges and crustaceans which are economically important and still have very high prices in the Egyptian market, due to the limitation of their fisheries expertise. - the high prices of fish in Egypt are due to a constrained supply, which mostly relies on wild-capture fisheries. Therefore, the present project aims to contribute to the management and increase the quality of Egyptian fisheries and aquaculture production that directly/indirectly affects the Egyptian income the activities of the food sector. The FishAqu masters’ program will be built to graduate qualified specialists able to manage the Egyptian fisheries and aquaculture activities, in order to sustainably increase the production of fish in Egypt and, consequently, increase Egyptian income. FishAqu program will consist of 15 different modules with theoretical and practical components covering all of the relevant issues in this knowledge area. Curricular courses will