As part of the European Commission's "Data Collection Framework", the MEDITS cruise is the Mediterranean component of the Sea surveys project.

The geographical coverage of the program includes all trawl facades from 12 countries in the Mediterranean Sea (Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Albania) and since 2009 in the Black Sea (Romania and Bulgaria). For the French part, the trawl areas are East Corsica and the Gulf of Lion.

The sampling strategy is common to all countries and standardized since 1994. The standardization of the observation methods allows the reproduction of bottom trawling under similar conditions and thus the comparison of abundance indices of different species between different areas from year to year. These protocols focus mainly on the cruise period, the location of the sampling stations, the characteristics and methods of use of the capture gear, the biological observations (weighing, counting, measurements, maturity analysis, sampling of otoliths ...), as well as on data storage and sharing formats. They have been defined in common and are applied by all teams participating in the program. States must therefore ensure the collection of data and the management of these direct assessment cruises.

The data from each cruise is used to provide several indicators required by fisheries managers for international expertise (GFCM (1) and STECF (2)) and national stock assessments (responses to MFAD referrals). (3), communications to the profession ...) but also for the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries, MSFD (4) (hydrology, gelatinous, marine litters, trophic chain ...) and for research purposes (projects GALION, DEMERSCAN, PhD Thesis). The data are routinely processed by the Halieutic System of Information of IFREMER to produce standardized indices of abundances. Data are also routinely shared within the international scientific community MEDITS.

(1) General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean
(2) Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries
(3) Maritime Fisheries and Aquaculture Directorate
(4) Marine Strategy Framework Directive