E - Iccat

DATA WORKSHOP - MADRID 2003
4.3 REPORT OF THE AD HOC DATA WORKSHOP (Madrid, Spain, 11 October 2003)
1. Opening of the Meeting
The Executive Secretary, Dr. Adolfo R. Lima, opened the Ad Hoc Data Workshop (“the Workshop”). Dr. Lima
thanked the participants for attending.
The Workshop was convened in response to the Resolution by ICCAT for a Data Workshop [Ref. 02-30] (see
Appendix 3 to ANNEX 4.3).
Six Contracting Parties and one Cooperating non-Contracting Party, Entity or Fishing Entity were in attendance
(23 participants). The Lis t of Participants is attached as Appendix 2 to ANNEX 4.3. Concern for the low
participation in the Workshop was expressed by several delegations, and it was recommended that this type of
meeting, in future, should be held in conjunction with the Commission meeting in order to improve participation.
The European Community regrets the poor participation of the Contracting Parties at this meeting, which
weakened the extent of recommendations to the Workshop since they could not be discussed by all the Parties.
2. Election of the Chairman
The United States proposed and the Workshop agreed that the SCRS Chairman, Dr. Joao Pereira, chair the
session.
3. Appointment of the Rapporteur
The ICCAT Secretariat served as Rapporteur of the meeting.
4. Adoption of the Agenda
The Agenda was modified slightly and adopted (Appendix 1 to ANNEX 4.3).
5. Review of data deficiencies, by species and considerations relating to catch data
5.1 Reports of the Secretariat and the SCRS Chairman
Dr. Victor Restrepo presented SCRS/2003/021. This paper provided an overview of data deficiencies for the
major species assessed by ICCAT. The review focused on the data available at the ICCAT Secretariat, with
emphasis on reported catches, size samples and catch/effort data. The document showed that there is poor
coverage in size/area/effort for many species. Furthermore, a substantial part of the total landings by species is
reported after the deadlines set by the Commission.
The SCRS Chairman noted that on 4 October 2003, a group of scientists met at the ICCAT Secretariat to discuss
issues related to the Workshop. He presented his summary of the conclusions reached at that meeting. In doing
so he commented on the Secretariat’s document and presented some additional data to augment it.
He noted that the Secretariat’s document stands on its own as a general summary of the data held institutionally
by ICCAT. The paper was prepared intentionally on a very aggregated level in order to avoid discussions by
country and to focus instead on individual species.
The SCRS Chairman noted that the Secretariat’s paper contained several important conclusions. One of them,
crucial to the terms of reference for the Workshop, is the fact that ICCAT as an institution has practically no
mechanisms for validating the data that are submitted to it. Therefore, the trustworthiness of the data held by the
Secretariat depends overwhelmingly upon the quality control mechanisms at the source of the data.
Another important conclusion, based on partial responses to a Survey on Statistic Collection Systems circulated
by the Secretariat, indicates that many countries with important tuna fisheries do not have the data collection
programs in place that are required or recommended by ICCAT. The Secretariat’s paper also demonstrated
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