Sustainable Tuna Fisheries in Seychelles

A meeting was held this week with FarFish partners in Victoria, Seychelles. The meeting was well attended by Case Study Leaders from the Seychelles Fishing Authority as well as tuna industry representatives and SFA staff. The FarFish work package leader on capacity development and dissemination and partners from the Long Distance Advisory Council and ICMAN-CSIC gave presentations about the progress of the FarFish project and next steps for cooperation.

The primary purpose of the meeting was to present, review, and discuss what has already been accomplished within the first stage of the Seychelles Case Study. The objectives of the Management Recommendations for Seychelles falls into two main themes related to sustainable tuna fisheries; namely, to improve data collection and to enhance monitoring, control and surveillance tools.

WP7 Leader Mary Frances Davidson and Deputy Director of the UNESCO-Fisheries Training Programme presented the status of the FarFish project so far with a focus on the Seychelles Case Study and reviewed some of the next steps for cooperation. Alexandre Rodriguez, Executive Secretary of the LDAC then presented the results from the first round of Management Recommendations, Outcome Targets, and Roadmap for 2020 and 2021 produced through the FarFish audit. Dr. Margarita Rincon of ICMAN-CSIC then demonstrated the Data Limited Methods Tool and the FarFish Database and described the various ways it can be used in situations where fisheries data may be scarce in the Indian Ocean.

The meeting concluded with a description of the capacity building opportunities available to SFA through the project, including participation in the advanced post-graduate training programme offered through UNESCO-FTP, a short course on Data Limited Methods which will take place in Mindelo, Cabo Verde in April, and the Tutor Web/Education in a Suitcase course, to be delivered in Seychelles later this year.