The European Union has to come up with concrete proposals soon if it wanted to control the severe overfishing threatening the short-term future of Mediterranean fisheries, Oceana said yesterday.

The ocean conservation advocacy organisation urged Brussels to take immediate action and implement measures such as carrying out emergency closures for stocks where fishing mortality is so high that it could not be returned to a sustainable state in the short term.

“We don’t want Mare Nostrum to become Mare Mortuum,” Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of Oceana in Europe, said.

“The European Commission and EU member states have the duty and power to take action now and end overfishing by 2020. Otherwise, closing all fishing activities in the Mediterranean will be the only option left to save marine resources and even to fulfil the law,” he said.

EU stocks, such as blackbellied angler, blue whiting and red mullet, were being caught in volumes that were more than 10 times than what was considered sustainable in some areas, Oceana said.