GAP2

Workshop for sustainable tuna management.
Sukarrieta, 12 december 2013.

On 12 December, a workshop was held in Sukarrieta between ANABAC and AZTI within the framework of the European project GAP2. The meeting brought together skippers and shipowners from ANABAC fleet owner member companies, the association ANABAC and AZTI scientists. The objectives were: to further promote responsible tropical tuna fisheries management based on the collaboration between the attending parties (skippers, ship owners, ship owners' association and scientists), and to facilitate a scenario of relations that would allow for improved communication between the various groups involved in tuna fishing.

The workshop started with a presentation on how the fisheries management system works, who the stakeholders are, and the use given to the information supplied to AZTI. The presentation made by Josu Santiago, AZTI tuna research coordinator, helped clear up some questions and engaged participants in a discussion in which practically all present shared their views.

Subsequently, the bulk of the work consisted of identifying priority actions aimed at improving the sustainability of FAD fisheries. The work was carried out in groups by occupation, and participants had to fill out a table identifying the things they could do and the things the other groups could do to implement the proposed actions. A total of 11 actions were put forward and each group identified what they could do to put each action into practice and what the others should do.

Lastly, the active involvement of the participants in the process of collective construction and validation allowed them to move from global to more concrete proposals, and ended with two major actions, prioritised and validated by all meeting attendees:

1. To continue with the study and evaluation of the impacts of FADs on the ecosystem and tuna populations.
2. To continue with the implementation of 100% non-entangling FADs.