6. It was agreed that the reporting of the meeting should continue in the form of an FAO Fisheries Technical Report along the lines of the report for the 2001 Swakopmund meeting. It was also agreed that it would be useful in achieving the objectives of the ad hoc committee and to the future commission, if appropriate organizations be informed as to the existence of the ad hoc committee and the results of its deliberations. It was agreed that this might be done by a joint statement by Australia and Namibia to the 2003 Committee on Fisheries (COFI) meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and possibly other relevant fisheries commissions meetings.
7. It was noted as desirable that stock status reports that included a description of the fishery be produced for the important species exploited in the study area for the guidance of a future commission. However it was noted that there would be legal constraints on publicizing of information that contravened national confidentiality requirements and further, to do so might prejudice obtaining the cooperation of the fishing industry in the future.
8. In discussions on the implications of having FAO act as a central depository for detailed national data, it was noted that no explicit FAO policy existed in regard to such a task, indeed, in general, the organization was not seeking this responsibility - that of a formal data depository, nor were they encouraging it. However, Shotton noted that he would undertake to act as an unofficial archivist for data, e.g. of catch and effort that became available until the future commission reached a decision on how it would proceed in this regard. Such data would be treated according to the express wishes of those providing the data; their explicit agreement would be sought as to how it should be handled, before any publication - keeping in mind that the activities of individual operators should not be apparent, at least not without their permission.
9. In this regard, it was agreed that it was important that efforts be made to secure fishing industry operations data, particularly from companies that no longer wished to operate in the study area and thus may have little or no incentive to retain useful information relating to their operations. In this regard it was generally noted that many operators were assumed to be losing money in the fishery and many had already discontinued their operations in the region.
