A Review of Regional Fisheries Management Organization Efforts in Addressing Cetacean Bycatch: Report to the International Whaling Commission

Bycatch remains the single largest threat to cetaceans globally, with an estimate of at least 300,000 cetaceans killed each year. Regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) govern specific fisheries within specific ocean areas throughout the world’s oceans, and may, as appropriate, be suited to monitor, manage and reduce bycatch. International legal instruments, such as the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention and UN Fish Stocks Agreement, call for RFMOs to address ecosystem-wide approaches in fisheries management. There has been criticism of RFMO performance in managing both their own target stocks and bycatch.
This report serves as a high-level overview intended to summarize initiatives within RFMOs related to cetacean bycatch reduction. It is a report commissioned by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Secretariat to provide an overview of RFMO efforts and policies related to cetacean bycatch, in order to help inform the IWC and its Bycatch Mitigation Initiative which RFMOs could be prioritized for collaboration on bycatch reduction. This report focuses on the following RFMO components: legally-binding conservation and management measures, observer programs, data analyses, and other voluntary progress (e.g., workshops and special collaborative projects). This information is analyzed in a semi-quantitative “bycatch mitigation effort” score, coupled with a “potential for bycatch risk,” to calculate an overall “average bycatch performance” score for each RFMO. It is important to note that this analysis was a simple, (nearly) binary review, is limited in scope as it only reviewed efforts in paper rather than in practice, does not survey coastal/artisanal fisheries, and has other limitations. Some 16 RFMOs were surveyed, regardless of cetacean bycatch levels, in order to better understand the overall policy landscape of RFMOs and cetacean bycatch. This index is a first in offering an index that assesses RFMO performance in monitoring and mitigating cetacean bycatch. There is room for improvement and the author welcomes further suggestions as to how to build on this initial attempt.
The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Living Marine Resources (CCAMLR), and the Western and Central Pacific Fishery Commission (WCPFC) received the highest scores in relation to bycatch mitigation effort, whilst the Convention on the Conservation and Management of Pollock Resources in the Central Bering Sea (CCSBP), North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC), and North Atlantic Salmon Commission (NASCO) scored the lowest. In relation to the average bycatch performance score for tuna-RFMOs, the WCPFC, Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), IATTC, and Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC)/ International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) scored highest to lowest respectively.
Based on these results and contextual considerations, recommendations to the IWC are: 1) Prioritize engagement with ICCAT, IOTC, the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO), and the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement (SIOFA); 2) Host a workshop on analysis of cetacean bycatch; 3) Collaborate with RFMOs and the FAO to advocate for cetacean bycatch requirements in RFMOs and share the recent FAO guidelines as widely as possible, including building capacity to implement them; 4) Collaborate with the FAO and WCPFC/South Pacific Community (SPC) to increase attention and utility of Bycatch Management Information System (BMIS)/bycatch data exchange protocol (BDEP); and 5) Expand on the research presented in this report.