A stepping stone towards a Regional Fisheries Observer Scheme |01 October 2016

The Regional component of the World Bank Funded SWIOFish1 project implemented by the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC), in partnership with the European Union Funded IOC-SmartFish project, this week hosted the Regional Observer Workshop in Seychelles.

The participants comprised representatives from the 12 Southwest Indian Ocean Fisheries Commission (SWIOFC) States1 with one from the pool of the national observer programme whilst the other from the maintenance and processing unit of observer data.

The SWIOFC was established in 2004 by a resolution of the FAO Council. The Commission promotes the sustainable utilization of the living marine resources of the Southwest Indian Ocean region, by the proper management and development of the living marine resources, and to address common problems of fisheries management and development faced by the Members of SWIOFC, without prejudice to the sovereign rights of coastal States. The Commission is regrouping Comoros, France, Kenya, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania and Yemen.

This week’s workshop provided an opportunity to all beneficiaries of the SWIOFish1 project and the IOC SmartFish project to prepare for the anchoring of the National Observer Programme within the Regional framework as being practiced under the IOC Regional Fisheries Surveillance Plan.

Currently there are only four out of 10 countries of the Eastern Africa - SWIO region with active National Fisheries Observer Programmes (NFOP), namely Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa and France. Since 2015, Seychelles, Mauritius and Comoros have started their NOPs.

SWIO region has a large fishing area where several countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones come together and an increasing number of countries in the SWIO region want to deploy observers’ on-board highly mobile distant water fishing fleets (mainly EU tuna purse-seine fleet). This has created the need for NFOP to coordinate observer deployments in order to be able to meet their national and international obligations, as well as respecting private agreements established with EU fleet vessel owners.

This workshop identified the needs of those SWIOFC States, namely Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Maldives, Somalia and South Africa in the development of their NOPs and ultimately converge with the IOC States NOPs into a Regional Observer programme for the benefits of the IOC and Eastern Africa Coastal States.

Participants were exposed to a presentation by OCUP on posting of Observers on French Vessels. The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) also contributed in the meeting in as much IOTC resolutions are closely related to deployment of observers for scientific purposes besides fighting Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. IOTC would also provide update on its Regional Observer Scheme (ROS) data base.