Reviews good practice for the responsible fishing

The purse-seine tuna fleet reviews its commitments of Good Practice for the responsible fishing.

• To ensure compliance and scientific monitoring, the tune fishing boats agreed to monitor the implementation of such practices in collaboration with AZTI Tecnalia, which will put the appropriate means to audit its compliance.
• Ship-owners members of Anabac and Opagac agreed that from now on all FADs manufactured and planted will be anti-entanglement.
• The verification of good practices will be provided with 100% coverage of observers on all tuna vessels in the course of this year.

Madrid, 6th May 2014 - All ship-owners of freezer tuna purse seiners belonging to the Spanish Fisheries Confederation, CEPESCA (represented by Anabac and Opagac) met at the headquarters of AZTI Sukarrieta (Biscay) to review their commitments to "good practices for responsible tuna purse-seine fishing", as signed in February 2012.
After a productive meeting, an updated text of "good practices" collecting all of the experiences learned during these two years prior commitments have been secured and a number of measures to strengthen compliance and its corresponding audit were taken.
The extensive experience in the design of non-entangling fish adding devices (FADs) that comply with the technical conditions not to entangle related wildlife whilst maintaining its adding capacity has allowed to identify designs that meet both requirements. Thus, ship-owners agreed that from now on, all FAD products manufactured and set at sea will necessarily be anti-entangling.
To verify and ensure compliance with this agreement, tuna entrepreneurs are carrying scientific observers aboard their vessels in a high percentage of their fleet. Owners have agreed that by the end of 2014 observers will be present in all tuna vessels. Likewise, they have agreed to request that AZTI Tecnalia verifies the implementation of such practices. AZTI is committed to devoting the appropriate means to audit compliance.

Finally, ship-owners have agreed that the Steering Committee will meet at a frequency of at least once per quarter. It will coordinate their actions with the signers of the "Strategic Plan for science and technology for sustainable management of tropical tuna fishing by the tuna freezer purse-seine vessels", ie the General Secretariat of Fisheries, the Spanish Institute of Oceanography and AZTI Tecnalia.
The next meeting of the Steering Committee will be in September 2014.