Small pelagic fisheries are historically affected by fluctuations in fish stock availability, leading to price instability and difficulties in business planning. ITACA’s main objective was to provide Producer Organisations (POs) in the North Adriatic area with innovative tools to plan fishing activities sustainably, matching fishing effort with market dynamics and resource availability. The project developed and tested these tools across 7 Italian and Croatian pilot regions before promoting their large-scale adoption. The project ran from 1 January 2019 to 30 June 2022, with a total budget of \u20ac1,744,467, of which \u20ac1,480,797 from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and \u20ac261,670 from national co-financing.<\/p>\n
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Bluefarm’s role<\/strong><\/h3>\nBluefarm participated in the ITACA project as a subcontractor of Veneto Agricoltura (Veneto Region’s Agency for Innovation in the Primary Sector), Lead Partner of the project.<\/p>\n
Bluefarm’s contribution focused on the development of an integrated bio-econometric model<\/strong> for the sustainable management of small pelagic fisheries in the Adriatic Sea. The model consists of two distinct and complementary modules:<\/p>\n1. Econometric module<\/strong><\/p>\nBluefarm developed a module for short-term (1-day ahead) and medium-term (1-month ahead) forecasting of wholesale prices for anchovy and sardine at the main Italian and Croatian fish markets. The module is based on SARIMAX procedures (Seasonal AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average with eXogenous regressors), selected for their ability to capture seasonal, weekly and calendar effects on price dynamics \u2014 typical features of small pelagic fish markets. The model was calibrated on daily and monthly datasets from the main Italian Adriatic markets, including Chioggia, Porto Garibaldi, Cesenatico, Ancona and San Benedetto del Tronto.<\/p>\n
2. Bio-ecological module<\/strong><\/p>\nThe second module provides 1-month ahead forecasts of the average growth (length and weight) of both species in the main Adriatic fishing grounds, through an individual bioenergetic model calibrated on water temperature and trophic availability data. The module also produces weekly cumulative estimates of total catches, to be compared with the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) as a constraint for fishing effort planning throughout the fishing season.<\/p>\n
The two modules are integrated: the output of the bio-ecological module (average fish size) feeds into the econometric module as an explanatory variable, since fish size directly influences the wholesale price.<\/p>\n
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1. Econometric module<\/strong><\/p>\n Bluefarm developed a module for short-term (1-day ahead) and medium-term (1-month ahead) forecasting of wholesale prices for anchovy and sardine at the main Italian and Croatian fish markets. The module is based on SARIMAX procedures (Seasonal AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average with eXogenous regressors), selected for their ability to capture seasonal, weekly and calendar effects on price dynamics \u2014 typical features of small pelagic fish markets. The model was calibrated on daily and monthly datasets from the main Italian Adriatic markets, including Chioggia, Porto Garibaldi, Cesenatico, Ancona and San Benedetto del Tronto.<\/p>\n 2. Bio-ecological module<\/strong><\/p>\n The second module provides 1-month ahead forecasts of the average growth (length and weight) of both species in the main Adriatic fishing grounds, through an individual bioenergetic model calibrated on water temperature and trophic availability data. The module also produces weekly cumulative estimates of total catches, to be compared with the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) as a constraint for fishing effort planning throughout the fishing season.<\/p>\n The two modules are integrated: the output of the bio-ecological module (average fish size) feeds into the econometric module as an explanatory variable, since fish size directly influences the wholesale price.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bluefarmenvironment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Immagine5.png\")
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