First came the surveys on the beach to find out how much the almost one million Spaniards who practice recreational fishing really fish. Now comes the next step: declaring catches by cell phone. From January 10, 2026, recreational sea fishing enters the era of electronic control with PescaREC, the official application that Spain is launching to comply with the new European regulations.
In a territory like the Balearic Islands, which Brussels has already turned into a laboratory for this activity – with more than 52,000 recreational licenses and 16.3% of all recreational boats in Spain – the change will be especially noticeable in Ibiza and Formentera, where the pressure on highly prized species such as raor, llampuga, squid, octopus, déntol or verderol is already a cause for concern.
From RECRIEO to PescaREC: science and control go hand in hand
As advanced by La Voz de Ibiza, the Spanish Institute of Oceanography(IEO-CSIC) has launched the RECRIEO project, a national study that for the first time will measure in detail what is fished, how much and by whom in recreational marine fishing. It is estimated that between 900,000 and 1.2 million people practice this activity in Spain.
In the Balearic Islands, RECRIEO plans to carry out 120 surveys per year out of a total of 2,229 interviews spread throughout the country. Researchers such as Miguel Cabanellas and Sandra Mayol will visit beaches, ports and fishing areas of the Islands to ask directly to the amateurs what they catch, with what gear and how much time they spend at sea.
“The objective is to create a national data plan to model the impact of recreational fishing,” Cabanellas explained to this newspaper. His colleague, IEO researcher in Cádiz Paz Jiménez, stresses that “having reliable and continuous data is essential to guarantee the sustainability of marine resources”.
In parallel to this field work, the European Union has approved the regulation that requires States to have an electronic system to record recreational catches of certain species from January 10, 2026. Spain has chosen to do so through an app: PescaREC.
What will change for recreational fishermen in the Pitiusas?
According to the design of the new state regulation, PescaREC will be the mandatory way for recreational fishermen to declare their catches in external waters when it comes to:
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Species subject to conservation measures (quotas or catch limits).
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Species included in multi-year plans or subject to landing obligation when recreational fishing has a significant impact.
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Species for which a specific authorization is already required for recreational fishing: bluefin tuna, other tunas, swordfish, billfish, sea bream, hake, among others.
For Ibiza and Formentera fans, that will translate into several obligations:
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Register in the app with your recreational fishing license.
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Report daily catches of these species, indicating how many specimens are retained and how many are returned to the sea.
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Report also the days without fishing, i.e., when you go out and do not catch anything.
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Assume that, in the future, the list of species could be expanded depending on risk, resource status and fishing pressure.
In inland waters, which depend on the Balearic Government, the communities can decide whether to adopt PescaREC for the rest of the species and thus avoid a “jungle” of different applications. In the Pitiusas, this would open the door to extend the electronic registry to emblematic species for the local hobby, such as raor, llampuga or squid, and even to especially sensitive areas such as the Marine Reserve des Freus.
Balearic Islands, epicenter: many licenses and species under pressure
RECRIEO itself places the Balearic Islands at the center of the map. The archipelago concentrates 52,512 recreational fishing licenses in force (39,208 individuals, 11,191 boats, 1,592 spearfishing and 521 sport fishing) and a very high percentage of recreational boats in the country as a whole.
In interviews, scientists have already detected great pressure on species of high commercial and social value:
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The raor and llampuga, highly appreciated by both recreational and professional fishermen and with high prices in the fish market.
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Squid, octopus, dentex and verderol, located at the top of the food chain and considered particularly sensitive to overfishing.
A previous work by Cabanellas in the Bay of Palma calculated that, between 2009 and 2014, recreational fishermen caught 34% of the squid landed by the entire Balearic commercial fleet. A data that illustrates why leisure fishing of species such as squid, so popular also in the waters of Ibiza and Formentera, cannot be considered marginal.
In the Pitiusas, the Govern has already tightened minimum sizes and has opened proceedings for illegal sale of recreational catches, a practice prohibited but denounced for years by the professional sector. At the same time, entities such as the Pereyna Recreational Fishing Association have collected thousands of signatures to continue fishing in marine reserves such as Freus, where the administration tries to reconcile the pressure on species such as raor, llampuga, squid or verderol with the conservation of ecosystems.
Control and knowledge: two sides of the same coin
PescaREC’s landing in Ibiza and Formentera will come barely a year after the IEO began asking recreational fishermen on the beach how much they fish and why they do it. The result will be an unprecedented combination of tools:
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RECRIEO will offer a detailed x-ray of the fishing effort, the social profile of the enthusiasts and the economic impact of the activity, with special attention to key species such as raor, llampuga, squid, octopus, déntol or verderol.
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PescaREC will provide a continuous flow of catch data for certain sensitive species, with the potential to detect rapid changes and fine-tune management measures in highly pressured waters such as those of the Pitiusas.
Experts admit that it will be difficult to get all recreational fishermen to always declare precisely what they catch. But they also recall that, without reliable information, it is impossible to know how much of the pressure on such iconic species for Ibiza and Formentera comes from the “hobby” and how much from the professional sector.
“It is important to make the sector understand that this is for their benefit,” Cabanellas summarized when talking about RECRIEO. The app that will arrive in a month and a half to the cell phones of recreational fishermen of the Pitiusas will be, to a large extent, the litmus test of that message.
