Sponsored By:
The Barbara Delano Foundation
The Homeland Foundation
The David & Lucile Packard Foundation
The AVINA Foundation

Presented By:
WildAid
Hawaii Audubon Society
Pacific Fisheries Coalition

Michael Pawson
Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science
.Pakefield Road, Lowestoft, Suffolk NR33 0HT, United Kingdom
Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Modern fishing technology and improved access to distant markets have together caused an increase in fishing effort and catches of sharks, skates and rays, and there is concern of the consequences for the populations of some species in several areas of the world's oceans. At present, there are few international management mechanisms effectively addressing this problem, and management and conservation of elasmobranchs are held back by a lack of knowledge of their biological parameters and of the statistics and practices employed in fisheries taking them.

FAO has recognised the importance of having international co-operation and co-ordination of shark management plans and, through a Technical Working Group and Consultation in 1998, has developed Guidelines leading to an International Plan of Action aimed at improved conservation and management of sharks (IPOA SHARKS).

The IPOA SHARKS is voluntary. It applies to States in the waters of which sharks are caught by their own or foreign vessels, and to States the vessels of which catch sharks on the high seas, either in directed fisheries for sharks or if their vessels regularly catch sharks in non-directed fisheries.

Such States are encouraged to adopt a national plan of action, a shark-plan, and to carry out regular assessments of the status of shark stocks subject to fishing. This would necessitate consistent collection of commercial data and improved species identification, and would ultimately lead to the establishment of abundance indices. International collaboration on data collection and data sharing systems for stock assessment is particularly important in relation to straddling, highly migratory and high seas stocks. It may be assumed that assessments for stocks in the North-east Atlantic will be carried out under the auspices of ICES.

In parallel with this development, the ICES Elasmobranch Study Group has taken the initiative to develop and carry out a European programme for elasmobranch stock assessments. Eighteen scientists from twelve countries are working together in a project which is being part-funded by the European Commission for studies in support of the Common Fisheries Policy.

The objective of this 3-year research programme is to improve the scientific basis for the management of fisheries taking elasmobranch species. This project aims to collate existing data, to instigate thecollection of new data and to develop standard assessment methods for one or two representative species of each of the four groups: pelagic sharks; skates and rays; coastal dogfish and catsharks; deep-water sharks. For this purpose, survey and fisheries data will be used to describe population distribution which, together with genetic, tagging and biometric data will be used to investigate stock separation. Commercial and survey catch and effort series will be used to indicate abundance trends, and length (and possibly age) distributions will be used to estimate historic and contemporary stock mortality rates. A key element of the research is the development of life history models and the compilation of appropriate biological data, which will be used to indicate whether current exploitation is sustainable. This study will provide a dedicated database and preliminary assessments for some important elasmobranch stocks, and will furnish ICES with a knowledge of data requirements and assessment methods which can be applied to elasmobranch species in order to provide management advice for both targeted fisheries and where elasmobranchs are taken as by-catch.