The Coral Triangle Fishers Forum has called for fisheries stakeholders in the Suva, Fiji region to help address the urgent and critical problem of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security’s (CTI-CFF) achievements to date and lay out the vision and call to action for its future.
The forum called for national governments to recognize IUU fishing as a threat to sustainable fisheries, food security, and livelihoods in the region and to prioritize actions at national and regional levels to address this problem, which include allocating sufficient funds for monitoring, control, and surveillance technologies and enacting traceability and catch documentation measures in fisheries.
Traceability and catch documentation as part of a larger effective information management system were identified as key solutions to addressing IUU fishing during the 3-day forum attended by local fishers, fishing companies, NGOs, regional fisheries bodies, and government representatives.
Adopting these systems in fisheries was recognized by the Forum not only as imperative to combating IUU fishing but also as sound business tools to help improve inventory management, seafood product quality, and market accessibility.
A detailed report of the Coral Triangle Fishers Forum including action plans and commitments will be available at www.panda.org/coraltriangle/fishersforum.
Photo courtesy of kylepost via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
