The further development of ACAP seabird bycatch indicators, data needs, methodological approaches and reporting requirements

The ACAP Action Plan calls on the Advisory Committee to routinely review and update data on the mortality of albatrosses and petrels in commercial and other relevant fisheries. In order to achieve this objective, a web-based reporting system was developed to capture and use fisheries and bycatch data submitted by Parties and collaborating Range States. Previous reviews of the aggregated data submitted by Parties highlighted that the temporal and spatial resolution are generally too coarse to enable useful assessments of seabird bycatch levels and trends. At SBWG6, an alternative proposal was discussed: that each Party analyses their own data and submits the relevant results to the Secretariat. It has been agreed previously that the Status-Pressure-Response framework will be used by ACAP to measure performance, and that the main Pressure Indicator for bycatch (P1) should be: total number of birds killed per year of ACAP species (by species where possible), and their bycatch rate, across each of the fisheries of member Parties. We have assessed this indicator and identified a number of matters that must be considered when estimating and reporting bycatch numbers and rates. We provide recommendations to standardise the approach to estimating and reporting these metrics for each fishery, so that metrics are comparable. We also consider how the indicator can be reported by ACAP at a global level, recognising that differences in data resolution exist between fisheries, and make recommendations on a reporting framework.