Stock Assessment

The Oceanic Fisheries Programme (OFP) of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) hosted a Stock Assessment Workshop (SAW) for fisheries officers from Pacific Island Countries and Territories, at SPC headquarters in Noumea, New Caledonia, 3rd–14th of July 2006. The report of the workshop is attached.

This information is to alert GEF focal point officers to the upcoming OFP-SPC Tuna Stock Assessment and Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) Workshops to be run at SPC Headquarters (Noumea) in mid-2008. Invitations to these workshops have already been sent to specific fisheries officers, via Heads of Department in each country. Therefore this notice is purely “for information” and does not require any actions to be taken by its recipients.

SPC recently hosted a stock assessment workshop for fisheries officers from countries and territories within the Western and Central Pacific region. The workshop was one component within the larger Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded Oceanic Fisheries Management Project.

Nominations for fisheries officers from Pacific Island Countries and Territories to attend one of two stock assessment workshops (focused on Western and Central Pacific tuna fisheries) being run by SPC in 2007 are being sought.

The quality of stock assessment on major regional stocks has advanced rapidly in the last five years and there is an improving understanding of the overall impact of fishing on regional stocks. However, the national needs assessments showed a gap between the strength of this work at a regional level and, the level of understanding and use of stock assessment methods and results nationally.