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1. Executive Summary

The Mediterranean Sea is at once highly treasured, and undervalued. While both ancient
civilizations and modern societies have acknowledged the sea’s importance, large swaths of the
basin remain unmanaged and open to threats.

Areas Beyond National Jurisdictions (ABNJ) currently constitute the bulk of the Basin’s volume of
2.5 million square kilometres. This vast area is diverse, with pockets of relatively high productivity,
and largely unprotected. Creating an ecological network of representative marine protected areas
under the aegis of the Barcelona Convention and its Specially Protected Areas of Mediterranean
Importance (SPAMIs) listings in the ABNJ could do much to preserve the integrity of this globally
important region.

This report describes the first phase in the process of developing such a representative network.
We describe a strategic and hierarchical process of using existing databases and analyses to
delineate areas of conservation importance, using the SPAMI criteria harmonised with criteria from
other site selection methodologies to suit Mediterranean conditions and information availability.

The first step in this hierarchical process was the assessment of subregions within the
Mediterranean Basin. Subdividing the Basin into subregions ensures that the eventual MPA
network will be truly representative of all regions, as well as all habitat types. While previous
researchers have divided the Mediterranean either into two large subregions (East and West) or
seven smaller subregions (see Spalding et al. 2007), we identify eight distinct subregions: Alborán
Sea, Algero-Provencal Basin, Tyrrhenian Sea, Adriatic Sea, Ionian Sea, Tunisian Plateau – Gulf of
Sidra, Aegean Sea, and Levantine Sea.

The second step in the process was to review existing criteria, adapt them, and add additional
discriminating features to guide the selection of sites. A review of existing information bases
reveals that data quality is inconsistent across taxa and geographical regions, yet much useful
information is available. The region-specific criteria that we used, with the SPAMI criteria as a
starting point, rely heavily on the CBD criteria that emerged from the Azores meeting (2008), but
with additional criteria that guarantee that the resulting network will conserve biological diversity
and ecological integrity to the maximum extent possible.

Data on benthic invertebrates, fish fauna, sharks, birds, marine turtles, pinnipeds, and cetaceans
were particularly useful to the site selection process. In addition, information on key biogenic and
physical habitats in the ABNJ domain helps create a useful baseline for the hierarchical
methodology.

The site selection process entails three discrete steps: 1) identifying the priority regions in each of
the Mediterranean ABNJ subdivisions using the refined site selection criteria; 2) applying further
analysis to the previously highlighted priority areas in order to identify potential sites that could be
protected as SPAMIs; and 3) preparing a short list of potential sites in the ABNJ which could be
protected as SPAMIs.