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
