9. There was a comprehensive discussion on the topic of how fishery-related data would be treated, both by the meeting and in any future deliberations. Among concerns were what would happen to data that were made available at assessment meetings and who would have access to it. One view expressed was that such data should not be provided in the absence of a convention. On the other hand it was recognized that there was an urgent need for action and that the relevant parties should be aware of what is happening in the fisheries in the study area. This would be needed to stimulate management action, but without management data this may be impossible.
10. As a consequence of these discussions, the following were agreed:
i. the draft protocol listed in Meeting Document 01/06[1] was considered as a good basis for handling of national, company or vessel data
ii. for the anticipated purposes of a future Ad Hoc Technical Committee, at this time there would be no need to identify the results of fishing operations by flag state, beneficial owner of vessels, company or individual vessel
iii. there was no need at this time to establish a central or common data base, rather appropriate national organizations would collect, process and archive the relevant fisheries operations data needed for future resource management analyses and
iv. when future technical meetings are convened, data would be provided by the national authorities on the basis that no copy of the data would be retained by others after the completion of the analyses of the technical meeting.
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[1] “Treatment of
Fisheries Data made available to the Ad hoc Meeting on Management of Deepwater
Fisheries of the Southern Indian Ocean”. |
