EU: The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) annual meeting, a missed opportunity

Published 2022년 5월 25일

Tridge summary

The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) held its annual session from 16 to 20 May 2022, with the European Union pushing for discussions on yellowfin tuna stock, a new management measure for drifting fish aggregating devices (FADs), and a catch reduction for skipjack tuna. However, the EU regretted that no agreement was reached on these issues, marking a missed opportunity for sustainable fishery management. The EU's proposals for managing FADs and reducing skipjack tuna catch also remained unadopted. Despite these setbacks, the IOTC adopted a far-reaching management procedure for bigeye tuna and an EU proposal on observer coverage, signaling some progress towards science-based management and the introduction of more electronic monitoring systems.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) has held its annual session from 16 to 20 May 2022. The main priorities of the European Union at the meeting were to discuss how to address the yellowfin tuna stock in the Indian Ocean, the adoption of a new management measure for drifting fish aggregating devices (FADs) and the adoption of catch reduction for skipjack tuna. The EU regrets that the IOTC could not agree on any of these items and considers this a missed opportunity for the sustainable management of the Indian Ocean fisheries. Yellowfin tuna catch reduction The EU went to the meeting engaged to discuss further catch reduction for yellowfin tuna, as explicitly advised by the IOTC scientific committee. Since the establishment of the rebuilding plan for yellowfin tuna in 2016, the EU, as the biggest contributor, has continuously reduced its yellowfin tuna catches by more than 21% as compared to 2014 levels (more than 20,000 t). No other IOTC member has matched this reduction. ...

Source: Fish Focus