A special two-part seminar discussing fisheries bycatch management
and electronic monitoring systems

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Transitioning from Piecemeal to Integrated Fisheries Bycatch Management

 

Eric Gilman, Milani Chaloupka, Laurent Dagorn, Martin Hall, Alistair Hobday, Michael Musyl, Tony Pitcher, Francois Poisson, Victor Restrepo, Petri Suuronen

 

Bycatch in fisheries can have profound effects on the abundance of species with relatively low resilience to increased mortality, can alter the evolutionary characteristics and concomitant fitness of affected populations through heritable trait-based selective removals, and can alter ecosystem state and services through food web trophic links. We challenge current piecemeal bycatch management paradigms, which reduce the mortality of one taxon of conservation concern at the unintended expense of others. Bycatch mitigation measures may also reduce intraspecific genetic diversity. We drew examples of broadly prescribed ‘best practice’ methods to mitigate bycatch that result in unintended cross-taxa conflicts from pelagic longline, tuna purse seine, gillnet and trawl fisheries. We identified priority improvements in data quality and in understanding ecological effects of bycatch fishing mortality to support holistic ecological risk assessments of the effects of bycatch removals conducted through semi-quantitative and model-based approaches. A transition to integrated bycatch assessment and management that comprehensively consider biodiversity across its hierarchical manifestations is needed, where relative risks and conflicts from alternative bycatch management measures are evaluated and accounted for in fisheries decision-making processes. This would enable managers to select measures with intentional and acceptable tradeoffs to best meet objectives, when conflicts are unavoidable.

 

 

Fisheries Electronic Monitoring Systems – Growth in Uptake, Functionalities and Accuracy, and Fishery-Specific Considerations

 

Eric Gilman, Petri Suuronen

 

Fisheries electronic monitoring (EM) systems are increasingly being used to complement conventional human at-sea observer programs and to establish at-sea fisheries monitoring where none previously existed. There have been about 100 fisheries EM pilot projects since the first was conducted in British Columbia in 1999. There are now 12 fully implemented EM programs. Globally, almost 900 fishing vessels and transshipment vessels have EM systems. This demonstrates substantial progress over the past two decades. But there are an estimated 4.6 million fishing vessels globally – and most of these are in fisheries with no monitoring. EM systems typically use onboard cameras, global positioning systems, sensors and data loggers to collect information on fishing, transshipment and supply vessels. They include office-based staff who analyze imagery and sensor data and input data into a database, usually operated by a fisheries body or other independent organization. There have been about 100 fisheries EM pilot projects since the first was conducted in British Columbia in 1999. There are now 12 fully implemented EM programs. Globally, almost 900 fishing vessels and transshipment vessels have EM systems. This demonstrates substantial progress over the past two decades. But there are an estimated 4.6 million fishing vessels globally – and most of these are in fisheries with no monitoring. The presentation will review (1) equipment used in fisheries EM systems, (2) trends in fisheries EM pilots and fully implemented systems, (3) benefits of EM over at-sea observer programs – including overcoming sources of statistical sampling bias, (4) deficits of contemporary EM systems and alternative fishery-specific solutions to address these deficits. There is a large role for EM to fill the tremendous gap in fisheries monitoring, where EM system designs need to be tailored to the context of individual fisheries.

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Click HERE to view a recording of this seminar.