5. The workshop was held in the Computer Centre of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, at the kind invitation of the Government of Barbados.
6. Twenty-eight participants from Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Commonwealth of the Bahamas, Commonwealth of Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, CARICOM Fisheries Unit (CFU), and FAO attended the Workshop. The List of Participants is given in Appendix A of this Report.
7. At the Opening Ceremony, Mr Stephen Willoughby, Chief Fisheries Officer of Barbados, welcomed the participants on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Government of Barbados. In his opening remarks, he reminded participants of the current efforts to secure the future viability of our marine resources through various environmental mechanisms and focus on sustainable exploitation. In highlighting the importance of fisheries to regional communities, Mr Willoughby noted the importance of fisheries information to the establishment of a common fisheries regime as was recently mandated by the intersessional meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government (February, 2003).
8. In his welcoming remarks, Mr Milton Haughton, Scientific Director of the CFU thanked the Government of Barbados, the FAO and the UWI for co-hosting the workshop. He expressed the Unit's appreciation of the utility of working with governments and other regional and international organizations in trying to address fisheries issues that are common and sometimes overlapping. Mr Haughton advised the participants that the CFU was aware that countries wanted to achieve sustainable management of their marine resources; but he cautioned that much work and information were still needed to understand the systems and to fashion a management model that was more in keeping with the needs of the region.
9. While highlighting the significance of the workshop in strengthening the technical capacity of the Fisheries Departments in order to promote fisheries management and development, Mr Haughton spoke of its significance in institutional and partnership building. He also spoke of the imminent launch of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) and its future role in promoting the development of a common fisheries regime for the CARICOM states.
10. Mr Constantine Stamatopoulos, Senior Fisheries Data Officer, FAO, welcomed the participants on behalf of the FAO Director General, Mr Jacques Diouf. He also expressed FAO's appreciation to the collaborating organizations for facilitating the delivery of a fisheries statistical training package that saw its genesis in an earlier workshop recommendation of the Working Party on Assessment of Marine Fishery Resources of the Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission (WECAFC), which was held in Jamaica.
11. Ms Hazel Oxenford, Acting Director of the Centre for Resource Management and Environment Studies (CERMES) of the University of the West Indies (UWI), made welcoming remarks to the participants and apologized for the absence of Mr Wayne Hunte, Vice Principal/Director of Graduate Studies of the UWI. She indicated that the UWI was pleased to be facilitating the workshop with tangible support, especially since the workshop was paying attention to improving fisheries data and analysis. She also expressed the willingness of the UWI to work with other regional institutions whenever possible to deliver useful service, not only in fisheries, but also in other areas of national and regional resource management development.
