EL TURISMO PESQUERO COMO INSTRUMENTO DE APOYO AL DESARROLLO SOSTENIBLE EN ZONAS LITORALES: LA EXPERIENCIA DEL PROYECTO SAGITAL

Abstract

Fishing activity has been historically a key element in the development of coastal towns, contributing important cultural, economic, environmental and social values. In the last decades, the change of economic model has caused that traditional activities like inshore fishing have considerably diminished, with the consistent negative repercussions. In this context, tourist activities directly linked with fishing, become, both in Spain and in the European Union, interesting diversification alternatives for the coastal zones traditionally dependent on fishing. The experience carried out in the Project SAGITAL (2005-07) is exposed in this paper; Project SAGITAL was coordinated by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and financed by the European Social Fund, and joined twenty partners directly linked to the fishing sector. The Project served to promote, both technical and legally, the development of fishing tourism activities, the Fishing-tourism specially. The methodology of management and promotion of the participation used in the Project, allowed a consensus between the professionals and the administrations of the fishing sector, in order to adequate the current fishing legal rules to allow and regulate the development of these activities. Keywords: Fishing policy, fishing tourism, coastal zones development, management of development projects;