Review of purse seine logbooks used in the ICCAT area and recommendations for a harmonised form

Logbooks for industrial fisheries are key in collecting valuable data for scientific, stock assessment and management purposes. ICCAT Recommendations [03-13], [11-01] and [14-01] require the use of Logbooks for data collection on fishing activities and establish minimum data requirements for the purse seine fleet. However, no ICCAT recommendation for a particular logbook template currently exists. The objective of this study is to review logbook models in use by the various Atlantic tropical purse seine fleets and compare them against ICCAT´s minimum data requirements. In particular most recent ones listed in Rec. [14-01]. Considering that the existence of a common ICCAT logbook template could, among other benefits, improve the accuracy and uniformity of data, the findings of this review will serve to recommend a logbook to be used by the ICCAT tropical tuna purse seine fleet.