International fisheries symposium
"International approaches to management of shared stocks - problems and future directions"
Cefas Laboratory, Lowestoft, UK
10th -12th July 2002
By invitation only
Summary of the Symposium
The 3 day symposium, organised and hosted by Cefas, brought together fisheries scientists, policy makers and managers from more than 20 different countries, giving a truly international flavour to the event. Mr Stephen Wentworth, the Defra Fisheries Secretary, opened the symposium with a very supportive speech for the fisheries science undertaken by Cefas, and the symposium proceeded smoothly to its conclusion with many excellent presentations
The feedback from the delegates and the organisers was extremely positive, and all participants had a very informative, productive and enjoyable time at Cefas. The organisers would like to thank all the delegates and keynote speakers for supporting our Symposium and for joining with us to celebrate our 100 years of fisheries research. Special thanks go to Dr Kevern Cochrane and Prof. John Pope for standing in at the last minute as keynote speakers.
The proceedings from the symposium have been published by Blackwells and are available for purchase, to order a copy please use the attached order form (PDF, 194KB).
Objectives
The aim of the Symposium was to bring together senior international fisheries experts to discuss the main problems in their fisheries management with respect to shared stocks and to seek new or improved approaches to the way forward. This was achieved through two days of keynote addresses and presentations, and a third day dedicated to rapporteured discussion groups to tackle specific issues. The symposium proceedings are currently being peer-reviewed.
The symposium addressed four themes, each one was led by a key note speaker:
Prof Doug Butterworth (University of Capetown, South Africa)
Prof John Pope (NRC Europe Ltd)
Dr Kevern Cochrane (FAO Rome)
Dr Geoff Kirkwood (Imperial College, UK and formerly head of the CSIRO Fisheries Laboratory, Australia).
Themes of the Symposium:
Theme 1: The consequences and management of unregulated/unreported catches
- direct impacts on targeted resources
- impacts of fishing on non-target predators and prey (e.g. other fish, mammals & seabirds)
- illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (including legal instruments, enforcement and penalties)
- approaches to quantifying and managing highgrading and discarding
Theme 2: Competition
- transboundary competition between management entities (and between different fleets)
- competitive influence of fishing with different gears (competing sectors)
- effects of overt and hidden economic incentives and disincentives, including subsidies and tariff barriers
Theme 3: External drivers and resource behaviour
- influence of marketing and trade on resources and industry - local and global
- implementation of the UN Fish Stocks agreement
- impacts of different approaches to management by adjacent jurisdictions including both within a nation state and between nation states (including approaches such as joint, co-ordinated and co-management, Quotas, ITQs and effort limitation)
- global issues in resource availability (including climate change)
Theme 4: Ecosystems and migration
- the role and impact of migration in transboundary migratory and highly migratory resources
- biodiversity issues, including impacts of fishing on the marine ecosystem
- sensitive non-target organisms, including issues such as competition for food and accidental killing of bycatch (e.g. seals, seabirds and turtles)
- dwindling fish stocks and the implementation of different approaches to management (recovery programmes, marine protected areas) with variable buy-in by competing management regimes (countries or provinces) or fleet components
- the role of CITES in managing shared stocks
- environmental drivers of abundance, migration and distribution
