Assessing progress in data reporting by tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations

Abstract

Tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) are responsible for conservation and sustainable management of transboundary tuna resources in Exclusive Economic Zones and Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ). The data collected and analyses performed by tuna RFMOs are one of the main sources of scientific information supporting the management, sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity in the ABNJ. An understanding of the scope and availability of data provided by tuna RFMOs is timely, given the expected establishment of a new legally binding high seas agreement to protect marine biodiversity in the ABNJ. We examined official catch statistics and stock assessments that are accessible in the public domain for the five tuna RFMOs, and evaluated their taxonomic, spatial and temporal resolution. We found that the Atlantic and Indian Ocean tuna RFMOs report catches for a greater number of taxa compared to Pacific RFMOs. There are substantial gaps in the taxonomic resolution of sharks and rays and ‘other teleosts’, and only about half of the reported global catches are georeferenced, despite existing mandatory requirements. Additionally, the estimation and reporting of discards in all tuna RFMOs remains incomplete. Tuna RFMOs have made progress in implementing stock assessments for a wide range of taxa including targeted species with high economic value but also functionally important non‐target species with lower economic value. However, assessments should be expanded to cover other bycatch species. We emphasize the importance of accessible and accurate statistics, for supporting the research and societal oversight needed under any future ABNJ biodiversity treaty.

Clustering of disaggregated fisheries data reveals functional longline fleets across the Pacific

“…Enduring knowledge gaps surrounding the nature and extent of regional resource extraction have contributed to ongoing biodiversity loss 7 while functioning to undermine the development of sustainable harvest strategies and the provision of social and economic benefits. 8 As new threats and stressors emerge alongside accelerating global environmental and socioeconomic change, 9 calls for increased coordination, cooperation, and transparency across the sector have intensified, and the need for equitable and comprehensive ecosystem-based resource management has grown increasingly urgent. 10,11 Although high-volume purse-seine fisheries comprise the vast majority of large pelagic fisheries landings across the Pacific, pelagic longline fisheries represent a substantial proportion of total catch value (30% in the Western Pacific in 2019 12 ) while exerting significant top-down pressure on open-ocean ecosystems across the basin.…”

Trends in Indian Ocean marine fisheries since 1950: synthesis of reconstructed catch and effort data

“…Historically, there has been considerable uncertainty around fisheries statistics in the Indian Ocean region (Pauly et al 2014;Pauly and Le Manach 2015;Pauly and Zeller 2016), contributing to low levels of stock assessments, other than for major tuna species (Moustahfid et al 2019;Heidrich et al 2022) and coral reef fish biomass assessments (e.g. McClanahan et al 2016), and, hence, a poor state of knowledge of the biomass status and associated sustainability of stocks.…”

“…Some data-limited stock assessments have been undertaken at the national level within the Indian Ocean region, for example, in India (Sathianandan et al 2021) and Pakistan (Raza et al 2022). Nevertheless, except for a number of high-level assessments conducted by the IOTC on a subset of IOTC-managed species (see Heidrich et al 2022), comprehensive assessments of stocks in the Indian Ocean are mostly lacking. Despite the limited data available, national assessments have shown concerning results; for example, only 34% of assessed stocks in India were deemed to be sustainable (Sathianandan et al 2021), and no quantification exists for the likely large number of exploited but unassessed stocks in the region.…”

Policy and transparency gaps for oceanic shark and rays in high seas tuna fisheries

“…This would require the availability of tRFMO compliance reports, many of which are currently not publicly available. Similarly, limited access to research‐grade, disaggregated datasets for bycatch species also prevents independent assessments of the efficacy of policy implementation on bycatch rates (Heidrich et al, 2022). Further work should seek to quantify the impact of a given policy approach on achieving bycatch reduction targets, as has been done for other technical bycatch interventions (Huang et al, 2016; Walsh et al, 2009; Watson et al, 2005).…”