An evaluation of Regional Fisheries Management Organization at-sea compliance monitoring and observer programs
Introduction
The rallying cry in the era of globalization and overexploitation has been for increased transparency, including in fisheries. The ability for those outside of the fishing industry to know and understand what is happening to the wild animals exploited offshore depends largely on fisheries observers, individuals employed by fisheries management agencies or a third-party contractor [1,2]. Fishery observer duties vary but can include logging daily fishing activities such as catch and effort, location and characteristics of vessels, reporting any incidents regarding safety on board, or quota, gear and by-catch violations, and in some cases, supervising and signing off on transshipment activities [2,3]. Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs), institutional bodies that manage fisheries in areas beyond national jurisdiction (the high seas), rely on accurate catch and effort data to establish the status of fish stocks and associated species, as well as sustainable fishing limits. Without these data, they cannot perform properly. There are an estimated 2500 observers worldwide (an estimate that includes national and high seas fisheries) [4] and they typically work alone and live among the crew on the vessel for as little as one day up to several months at sea [5]. The data observers report may indicate a need for changes in quotas, stricter regulation on types of fishing gear, enhanced enforcement of policies, or increased conservation efforts for species impacted by by-catch [2,3] and as a result observers can be at odds with the fisheries crew [5]. Given the risks of the position (see Table 1), who watches out for these witnesses?
There is a plausible connection between the protection of fisheries observers and the protection of marine animals. Observers are likely to be at a greater risk when they observe illegal activities, which often compromise the regulations put in place to protect or conserve a species. On the high seas, the areas of the ocean outside of national jurisdiction, fish and invertebrates have been subject to more and more fishing effort over the past few decades [[6], [7], [8]], in large part due to government subsidies, especially for fuel [9]. Many fish species straddle the boundaries between national Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and international waters, and as coastal waters have become increasingly exploited, fishing vessels have traveled further offshore to catch fish [7,8,10,11]. An estimated two-thirds of high seas fish populations are either depleted or being overfished [12,13], and much of the global fish catch is stable or declining despite increasing effort [14]. Discards and by-catch of non-target species, such as seabirds, turtles, sharks and rays, threaten many vulnerable species and present a major conservation concern [[15], [16], [17]]. Ocean pollution, particularly plastic, is also negatively impacting marine ecosystems and fish populations [18].
RFMOs, international bodies comprised of fishing countries and where too often resource exploitation considerations are prioritized over conservation concerns, are charged with coordinating and implementing fisheries management efforts of highly migratory species both within and beyond the areas of national jurisdiction, and of areas of the high seas generally under the United Nations Fish Stock Agreement of 1995 [19]. Fisheries management issues are particularly difficult to address for fisheries that straddle the boundaries between national waters and the high seas due to the remote nature of high seas fishing activity and the large areas that some fish species, such as tuna, traverse [8,9]. RFMO requirements for the use of satellite tracking technology have improved monitoring of the movement of fishing vessels and enhanced governance, including detecting the presence of unauthorized vessels in delineated management areas and illegal transshipments at-sea [20,21], but this technology does not provide direct information about what is happening onboard the fishing vessel.
Fisheries observer programs or some form of at-sea monitoring are part of the regulations for most RFMOs, as well as the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), and for our purposes we include CCAMLR as an RFMO [22]. The mandates of these observer programs vary from being primarily focused on scientific data collection to being primarily a compliance monitoring scheme [23], although most observer program mandates include elements of both. Fishing vessel owners and captains are often resistant to observers due to logistics and costs [3,24] and also because observers are recording the vessels' activities [25]. Human observers have been subject to intimidation, harassment, assault, and have been murdered or have disappeared at sea [5,26]. According to official reports, crewmembers have requested that observers in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission not report conservation measure violations [27], illustrating pressures on observers and demonstrating why observers may collude with crewmembers on illegal activity to protect their own safety [25].
Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) on-board fishing vessels, a system of cameras, gear sensors, video storage, and satellite positioning, has been proposed as one alternative monitoring tool, as it could lead to more comprehensive coverage and could complement some of the liabilities associated with human observation [24,[28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33]]. In trial studies, REM recording was able to closely match human observer accuracy in some monitoring areas, including catch volume, effort, and species composition [24,[29], [30], [31],33]. Beyond fisheries regulations and conservation measures, well-regulated, transparent, and independent REM systems could be used to monitor labor and human rights conditions onboard vessels, and facilitate the adoption of specific RFMO provisions on human rights and the monitoring of their implementation, as well as compliance with existing obligations under other conventions, such as Articles 40 through 44 on compliance and enforcement in the International Labor Organization Work in Fishing Convention (No. 188) [24]. A study on Danish fisheries using a variety of on-board monitoring techniques found that the majority of fishers who had used REM responded positively to its use, signaling the potential for crew acceptance [32]. As REM systems become more cost-effective, the potential for scaling the technology to cover all fishing vessels in RFMOs becomes more realistic. A study on REM installation on UK fisheries found that the costs of installation fell by 22% per year from 2015 to 2017 [28]. Although a detailed study comparing the costs of REM and human observers has not been conducted, estimates currently suggest that a combination of REM and human observer monitoring could be used to cover fishing vessels with 100% at-sea monitoring at a small fraction of the cost of using only human observers, including maintenance [24,28].
However, REM still has some important limitations and a move towards more extensive fishing industry monitoring using REM would require extensive regulation to ensure adherence to technical and implementation standards, as well as public accountability and oversight. Currently, REM is less accurate at recording high-volume fisheries, such as purse seines and trawls, and there are scientific data, such as sex and maturity, that REM either cannot detect at all or cannot detect as effectively as human observers [24]. Trial studies highlighted that there are still some instances of REM failing to record catch, by-catch, discards, or species interactions, due to camera angles, system handling, and other technological limitations [24,29,30]. In addition, REM systems are potentially prone to corruption and tampering, including being turned off by crewmembers and prevented from recording critical information [34]. Human observers that are onboard alongside REM systems can help to direct camera angles, ensure system functions, act as an important third-party witness, and record specific data that REM systems will miss, such as discard survival and more detailed scientific data critical to fisheries management. Most studies on REM argue that with proper handling and the complement of human observers, REM could allow fisheries to approach 100% at-sea coverage and accuracy, but that strictly applied high standards are crucial to REM success [24,28,35]. Most important, wide-scale adoption of REM should not lead to less transparency and independent oversight and increased self-monitoring by the fishing industry.
Here we examined the mandated at-sea compliance monitoring and observer programs for 17 Regional Fisheries Management Organizations, including CCAMLR, (Table 2), and how they ensure that monitoring of conservation measures takes place effectively while protecting human observer safety. Previous studies have compared certain RFMO observer programs as they relate to specific conservation goals, such as by-catch provisions, but no study has previously conducted a broad scale review of all RFMO observer and at-sea monitoring programs as they relate to coverage levels, compliance reporting, observer rights and safety regulations, and public transparency [3,23]. We developed a set of criteria questions to assess the RFMOs across these conservation concern areas. We also look specifically at trends in observer reports of violations from 2013 through 2017 in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) [27]. Finally, we make policy recommendations around the complementary nature of human observers and REM systems.
Section snippets
Methods
We reviewed RFMO convention texts, resolutions, mandates, conservation measures, and information available on official websites to evaluate at-sea compliance monitoring and observer programs in place as of January 2019 (See Supplementary data for a list of the most comprehensive sources on observer and electronic monitoring regulations for each RFMO in addition to the measures cited directly in the text). We developed a set of criteria questions across four categories to examine the stringency
Results
Of the 17 RFMOs (Table 7 and Fig. 1), 14 have some form of regional policy on observers. None of the RFMOs make all observer reports and raw data publicly available. Three RFMOs: ICCAT, IOTC, and WCPFC publish regional-level summaries of observer compliance violation reports and safety concerns that are publicly available [27,38,39]. For both the ICCAT and the IOTC, these summary reports are only available for the transshipment observer scheme [38,39]. In addition, the IATTC makes yearly
Discussion
The heterogeneity among RFMO rules about fisheries observers is notable and shows that improvements are necessary (Fig. 5). Only four RFMOs (CCAMLR, IATTC, SPRFMO, and WCPFC) currently mandate a specific process in the event that an observer disappears or dies. The Association for Professional Observers (APO) has identified several known observer deaths or disappearances that occurred under suspicious circumstances (Table 1). Many of the known observer disappearances occurred in RFMOs that have
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Christopher Ewell: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. John Hocevar: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing - review & editing. Elizabeth Mitchell: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing - review & editing. Samantha Snowden: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing. Jennifer Jacquet: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
All of the authors declare no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank the Pew Marine Conservation Fellowship to J.J. in 2016 that supported J.J. and C.E. The authors also thank two anonymous reviewers, as well as James Gibbon, Chris Jones, Sebastian Losada, Andy Shen, Robin Teets, and members of the Association for Professional Observers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.
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