Fishery Monitoring, Coordination & Enhancement
The assessment of needs conducted by the national missions showed that the most important short-term priority for Pacific SIDS in meeting their obligations as Members of the WCPF Commission is the enhancement of their capacities to monitor oceanic fisheries activities for which they are responsible. Under the Convention, national and regional monitoring responsibilities are multi-faceted - as coastal states, Pacific SIDS are responsible for monitoring fishing in their waters, generally through the collection of catch and effort data from logsheets and by onboard observers; as flag states they are responsible for monitoring the fishing and catches by their vessels, including port sampling – it is generally more difficult and expensive to monitor the activities of the larger number of smaller vessels which make up the local fleets; and as port states they have responsibilities to monitor landing and transhipment in their ports. Data then needs to be provided to the Commission for science and compliance purposes in accordance with standards to be adopted by the Commission. At this point, all Pacific SIDS have monitoring programmes in place which are designed to meet national needs, but no Pacific SIDS has the capacity to provide data in the form, and of the quality, that will be required by the Commission. At the regional level, low quality of some data contributes to levels of uncertainty about stock assessment results that undermine the use of those results for decision-making – the quality of data from Pacific SIDS fleets is a particular area of weakness despite improvements during the Pacific SAP project.
Sub-Component 1.1 will develop a template for a national monitoring programme that will integrate logsheet, observer, port sampling, landing data, provide data in the form to meet Commission requirements and support the application of that template nationally. The template will be based on a standardised database and associated software, which can be customised to meet different national needs and relate to different national capacities and will include a reporting module for the generation of data and data products to be provided to the Commission. The template will be made available to other Commission Members, particularly developing state members.
National monitoring coordinators will oversee the application of the template at a national level, supported by technical advice and regional and in-country training. This will improve understanding of changes in the fisheries at a national level and will strengthen national fisheries compliance programs, improve the quality, compatibility and availability of data for the scientific and compliance work of the Commission and enable Pacific SIDS to be better informed in adopting national positions in the work of the Commission.
There will be a link with elements of Component 2 to ensure that laws are reformed and compliance capacities are strengthened to enforce mandatory fishery monitoring activities.
Available Documents
2nd Tuna Data Workshop
The Pacific Islands Oceanic Project (GEF) was the main sponsor of the 2nd Tuna Data Workshop (TDW-2) which took place at the SPC headquarters from the 7th to 11th of April.Participants from 15 FFA member states, two French territories and the Philippines took part in the workshop.The main aim of the workshop was to acquaint the group with the best methods for preparing annual catch estimates and to share experiences of managing tuna data.
Work for the participants started early, as completed national status reports outlining the current state of tuna data collection and management in their countries were carried to the workshop. These status reports, now available on-line, formed the basis of the first plenary session when participants revealed how the work was advancing in their own countries.
A presentation on annual catch estimates was followed by protracted small group exercises on calculating the catch estimates for three fictitious fisheries. The experience gained in this exercise gave many participants the confidence to determine their own national fleet tuna catch estimates. Many participants had compiled their annual catch estimates before the close of the workshop and well in advance of the April 30th deadline for submission established by the WCPFC. Additional workshop presentations and discussions included: facilitating data exchange, assessing various resource requirements, database training and strengthening the legal basis of tuna data collection.
The main recommendations of the workshop were to (i) explore mechanisms to better facilitate data exchange amongst member countries, (ii) develop and provide resource material to help countries prepare for data audits, (iii) disseminate the results of the FFA project on legal obligation for data provision and request that SPC and FFA work together to prepare guidelines for the legal provision of data, and (iv) improve support and raise awareness for role of the National Tuna Data Coordinator, both at the national and regional levels.
More information on the workshop, including the main outputs and final recommendations in full are available from.
For further information please contact:
Deirdre brogan
Email: DeirdreB@SPC.int
First Tuna Data Workshop
The collection, management and reporting of data is an important foundation for managing the world’s largest tuna fisheries. In recognition of the importance of this work GEF funding was used to run a Tuna Data Workshop (TDW-1) at SPC, New Caledonia. The workshop was aimed at National Tuna Data Coordinators who are employed in each of the Pacific Islands Countries and Territories (PICTs). Additional co-funding was supplied by the EU under its PROC FISH project This, the first data workshop, concentrated on the collection and management of tuna fishery data. Presentations by Oceanic Fisheries Programme staff were structured under the broad concept titles of ‘Why’, What’ and ‘How’ in regards to tuna data collection. Participants were encouraged to contribute and did so strongly throughout the workshop. The group sessions outputs were used to compile and enhance important final outputs on; the reasons to collect data at the national level, the problems encountered and possible solutions to these collection problems. It is hoped that for future workshops the focus will more to the dissemination of tuna data. The next workshop is provisionally planned for the first quarter in 2008.
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