The Jabuka/Pomo Pit is located in the central Adriatic between Italy and Croatia. It is considered the most important habitat for some of the Adriatic’s demersal stocks, especially hake and Norway lobster.
Its muddy and sandy seabed hosts different benthic features, such as gas-related morphologies (e.g. pockmarks and mud volcanoes) and scattered rocks, which increase the heterogeneity of the seabed supporting local biodiversity.

Its seabed, moreover, hosts many vulnerable marine ecosystems such as sea pen meadows and sponge gardens. These environments are particularly sensitive to the impact of bottom gear fisheries which, being continuous and ubiquitous, make their recovery very difficult.
Given its biological importance, in 1998 Italy introduced in the Jakuba/Pomo Pit a Zone of Biological Protection (Zona di Tutela Biologica, ZTB), closed to all commercial and recreational fisheries. However, in 2003 the ZTB was reopened to fishing, and remained without protection for six years. In 2009 Italy closed again the ZTB to fisheries, only to step back once more in 2016 when trawling was yet again authorized within the ZTB.

It was only in 2017, thanks to MedReAct and the Adriatic Project proposal to establish a Fisheries Restricted Area (FRA) in the Jakuba/Pomo Pit, that the area was finally protected by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean Sea (GFCM). Since then, the Jabuka/Pomo Pit began to regenerate.
In just two years the Jabuka/Pomo FRA produced an extraordinary increase of the commercial fish biomass such as Norway lobster and hake and the return of some vulnerable species, such as demersal sharks.

Today, the Jabuka/Pomo Pit FRA, enjoys permanent protection as well as a control system that has sharply minimised illegal fishing activities, and has become a model to be replicated across the Mediterranean.