water Article New Data on the Biology and Fisheries of the Threatened Palinurus elephas (Fabricius, 1787) (Decapoda, Achelata, Palinuridae) from the North-West Aegean Sea, Greece Thodoros E. Kampouris 1,* , Drosos Koutsoubas 1, Debora Milenkova 2, Georgios Economidis 3, Stylianos Tamvakidis 4 and Ioannis E. Batjakas 1 1 Department of Marine Sciences, School of the Environment, University of the Aegean, University Hill, Mytilene, 811 00 Lesvos Island, Greece;
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[email protected] 3 Fisheries Department, Directorate of Agricultural Economy and Fisheries, Region of Central Macedonia, 64 26th October Str., 546 27 Thessaloniki, Greece;
[email protected] 4 Department of Farming and Fisheries, Directorate of Agricultural Affairs of Central Macedonia, Decentralized Administration of Macedonia–Thrace, Navarinou 28 and Karaoliand Dimitriou, 551 31 Thessaloniki, Greece;
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[email protected] Received: 17 June 2020; Accepted: 23 August 2020; Published: 26 August 2020 Abstract: The European spiny lobster Palinurus elephas is a vulnerable species that inhabits and is harvested in the Mediterranean Sea and the adjacent Atlantic waters. The fisheries associated with the spiny lobster are mainly conducted with tangle nets, trammel nets, pots, and creels. The fishing pressure has greatly reduced their numbers, changing them from a common shallow coastal species to a largely remnant population. The relative research on the species’ biology and fisheries from the eastern Mediterranean Sea is almost absent. The fishery along the Chalkidiki Peninsula, Greece, is multispecies, and fishing is conducted by a small number of artisanal fishermen mainly using trammel nets.