The last ten years have seen a growing disillusionment with many conventional fishery management methods, in part, I would suggest, since the managers using them have been unaware of the complexity of the ecosystems they are dealing with. The pendulum seems to be swinging steadily in the direction of spatially-based management tools for fisheries (see e.g. Hilborn & Kennedy 1992; Walters et al. 1993; Seijo et al. 1994; Hall 1998; Caddy 1999a), and the Mediterranean is ideally suited for testing and applying such mechanisms from both the geographical aspect, and in terms of its high biodiversity.