The second meeting of the Working Group on Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (WGVME) took place from 26 to 28 February 2018 at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) headquarters, Rome, Italy. As agreed by the forty-first session of the Commission (Montenegro, October 2017), the meeting addressed the requirements of Resolution GFCM/41/2017/4 on a permanent working group on vulnerable marine ecosystems to carry out the following tasks: i) collect information and map the distribution of VMEs; ii) advise on new proposals for closures and on the enforcement of existing measures (e.g. of existing fisheries restricted areas [FRAs] addressing VME protection); iii) assess technical information; iv) advise the Scientific Advisory Committee on Fisheries (SAC) on matters related to VMEs; v) contribute to designing and managing a Mediterranean VME geodatabase; and vi) contribute to the establishment of a close collaboration and proper communication channels with scientific bodies from other regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs). In particular, the objectives of the 2018 WGVME were to: i) review and update the technical elements for the establishment of a VME encounter protocol; ii) discuss additional potential management measures to be applied to deep-sea fishing; iii) update the information on the existence and distribution of Mediterranean VME; and iv) address the newly adopted Resolution GFCM/41/2017/5 on a network of essential fish habitats (EFH) in the GFCM area of application.

The meeting reviewed the technical elements for the protection of VMEs in the GFCM area of application drafted by the 2017 WGVME, paying particular attention to management elements for the mapping of the existing deep-sea fishing areas for the Mediterranean (by 2020), the establishment of a VME encounter reporting protocol and of an exploratory deep-sea bottom fishing reporting protocol, the adoption of VME indicators (features, habitats and taxa) and the creation and use of a GFCM VME geodatabase. The WGVME also agreed on a process for the establishment and protection of VMEs while determining the fishing footprint.

The WGVME addressed the issue of EFH working towards the objectives of: i) reviewing the information available on EFH and sensitive habitats (SH) in the Mediterranean Sea; ii) creating a network of people working on EFH and SH in the Mediterranean; and iii) defining a roadmap on how to address Resolution GFCM/41/2017/5. Thus the WGVME drafted a catalogue of projects and people working on EFH in the Mediterranean and collected all available model-based maps of EFH of priority species in the Mediterranean to provide a basis for future work on the creation of regional composite maps per species. Finally, the WGVME proposed a roadmap for future work on the establishment of a network of EFH in the Mediterranean.