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Although a career academic, Professor Edmond Panariti, is no stranger to politics having served in the Tirana municipality before becoming first Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2012 and a year later Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development and Water Resources, a position he has held since. As the person ultimately responsible for the administration of the fisheries sector in Albania, Professor Panariti has several ideas to increase productivity and efficiency.

The Albanian fisheries and aquaculture sector is diverse. It comprises a marine fishery, an inland fishery, freshwater aquaculture and marine aquaculture. In addition, there is a processing industry that uses domestic raw materials as well as imports to supply local and overseas markets.

The company Rives was established by Spiro Fuqi, a chemical engineer by training, some two decades ago. Located on the outskirts of Pogradec, a city on the shore of the Lake Ohrid and a few kilometres from the border with Macedonia, Rives specialises in completely natural products created from the fish caught in the lake.

The Faculty of Agriculture and Environment at the Agricultural University of Tirana has a laboratory for aquaculture and fishery. The laboratory is based in Durres and is led by Dr Jerina Kolitari, a specialist in fish otoliths.

Production in Turkish fisheries was lower in 2014 than the previous year while aquaculture production was stable. Fisheries production fell by over a fifth maintaining the overall trend of the last decade, but farmed fish, despite a sizeable decrease in the production of farmed trout, remained at broadly the same level as in 2013 thanks to increases in output of seabass and seabream.

Mare Adriatik based in Shkoder is a company with interests in fishing, processing, and farming. It is the only enterprise to farm mussels in the bay in Shengjin in the north of the country as opposed to the traditional mussels cultivating grounds in the Butrinti Lagoon.

Hasan Girenes is President of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Yasar Group, a Turkish industrial conglomerate. He is also Chairman of the Izmir Fish Producers Association. Fish farming is an important industry in Turkey, where 230,000 tonnes of fish were cultivated in 2014 of which 83,000 tonnes were exported. Although aquaculture plays an inceasingly important role in supplying the world with healthful protein, the industry suffers from a negative image. In this comment Mr Girenes discusses how this can be changed.

Along the eastern edge of Albania, where it borders Macedonia and Greece, are three lakes; Lake Ohrid, and the greater and lesser Prespa Lakes. Lake Ohrid, the largest of the three, is shared by Albania and Macedonia, with about a third of the approximately 350 sq. km surface area on the Albanian side of the border.

Lina Kujalyte, Vice Minister in the Lithuanian Ministry of Agriculture has been responsible for aspects of the reformed Common Fisheries Policy that are only now being implemented, for example, the landing obligation, which in the Baltic Sea came into force at the start of the year. Lithuania also held the chair of BALTFISH, an organisation that brings stakeholders from EU countries around the Baltic Sea together to work out common positions on policies concerning the Baltic. Ms Kujalyte is also a strong proponent of aquaculture, a sector which will receive the largest chunk of funding from Lithuania’s allocation from the EMFF. Here she discusses some of her priorities for the fisheries sector in the country.

The Lithuanian fisheries sector has a long historical traditions and is a part of the national heritage in the Baltic Sea coast area. The segment comprises a high seas fleet, a Baltic Sea fleet, and a coastal fleet. There is also a small freshwater fishery in the Curonian lagoon. The aquaculture industry in Lithuania is dynamic and the production of farmed fish has been increasing in terms of both value and volume.