The working party meeting on data collection and statistics in progress

The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) is this week holding two technical meetings in preparation for its eight session to take place at the  International Conference Centre from December 8 to 12.

IOTC, whose secretariat is based in Victoria, has the mandate to manage tuna stocks in the Indian Ocean.

The commission's fifth working party meeting on data and statistics collection which began on Monday December 1,  will end this afternoon. During the meeting, working parties for different species of tuna present and compile summaries related to the fishing of tuna and tuna-like species in the Indian Ocean, to be presented to the scientific committee. The scientific committee will meet in its sixth technical session as from Wednesday morning. The meeting will run until Saturday December 6.

Scientists attending the meeting will review the report of IOTC's activities during the year 2003 and make recommendations pertaining to tuna management and dissemination of information about tuna fisheries in the Indian Ocean for 2004.

IOTC's executive secretary, David Ardill said that these annual working and technical meetings to culminate in the commission's session next week, normally bring together scientists from the 20 member states of the organisation, delegates from the European Union and other countries with fishing and research interests in the Indian Ocean.

From the data gathered about the quantity and the size of fish caught and how much fishing effort there is, from each member country, the organisation uses a state-of-the-art computer system to estimate the stock situation of the Indian Ocean region.

With regard to the stock of the three most fished tuna species in Seychelles, Mr Ardill said that the stock for Skip Jack normally fished by purse seiners was in good health, but certain precautions have to be taken in the case of the Big Eye and Yellow Fin tuna stocks, which have already reached their maximum sustainable yields. This means that measures have to be taken to ensure that there is no increase in the catches of these two tuna species in the future.

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