Scientific data available to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission

This paper reports on the major developments over the past year with regard to filling gaps in the provision of scientific data to the Commission.

The review of gaps in 2015 and 2016 scientific data provisions includes the assignment of a tier-scoring evaluation level. There have not been any significant developments in some categories of the main data gaps over the past two years and readers have therefore been referred to the relevant sections in past data-gap papers. Recent developments include sections on:
the latest provisions of operational data and remaining gaps issues with key shark species reporting annual estimates of discards/releases
a presentation of the coefficients of variance for longline caught species based on observer data are provided.

All CCMs with fleets active in the WCPFC Convention Area provided 2016 annual catch estimates by deadline of the 30th April 2017, a significant achievement. The issues previously reported in annual catch estimates have further reduced and the lack of any estimates for key shark species remains the main gap for certain CCMs.

The timeliness of the provision of aggregate catch/effort data continues to improve and for the first time, all CCMs provided their 2016 data by the deadline of 30th April 2017. The quality of aggregate data provided also continues to improve with a reduction in the number of data-gap notes assigned to the aggregate data in recent years. The issues that remain include the reporting of key shark species catches for some CCMs and the reporting of longline catch in number for one CCM.

The main developments in the resolution of operational data gaps over the past year were the provision of 2016 operational data for the Indonesia tuna fleets (longline, pole-and-line and purse seine) for the first time and the provision of operational data for the Chinese Taipei longline fleet with advice that their domestic legal constraints which prevented them from submitting in the past have been resolved. The continued provision of operational data for the Japanese, Chinese and Korean tuna fleets is also noteworthy.

The paper solicits SC13 feedback in three areas:
- SC13 is invited to consider establishing a project with a targeted approach to addressing the current gaps in conversion factor data;
- There has been a recent significant increase in data generated from E-Monitoring trials and SC13 is invited to consider how these data should be dealt with in the WCPFC context, specifically in regards to ROP longline coverage;
- SC13 is invited to consider and comment on the plan to enhance the set of WCPFC public domain data available on the WCPFC web site, with the assurance that the WCPFC rules for public domain data will be applied.

The UNDP-funded Sustainable Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the West Pacific and East Asian Seas (WPEA–SM) project terminates this year, with a new WPEA project supported by New Zealand scheduled to commence later this year. These projects contribute WCPFC technical assistance to the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam to, inter alia, improve monitoring and data management of their domestic fisheries. There has been good progress in the collection and provision of data from each of these countries in recent years and the paper also lists some of the challenges that remain.