Climate change is altering ecosystems and fisheries throughout the world's oceans, demanding climate‐adaptive governance for conserving and managing living marine resources. While in some regions fisheries management systems address wider ecosystem dynamics within management frameworks and decision‐making, which may facilitate resilience to climate change, there remains a shortfall in terms of directly incorporating climate change adaptation into fisheries management legislation and implementation. This review assesses the current state of implementation of climate change adaptation into fisheries management policies and legislation across 11 national case studies, based on government documents and the primary literature. The overarching goal is to understand the key elements and gaps in existing fisheries management policies and legislation in the context of climate change. Given recent reforms of fisheries management policies and/or legislation across the nations examined, political recognition of the need to address climate change adaptation in fisheries management appears to be increasing; albeit formal mandates of climate‐adaptation objectives in fisheries management are largely missing. Based on our review, recommendations for achieving climate‐adaptive fisheries management regimes are developed. Overall, this study will help to inform and broaden the scope of management approaches and tools to accelerate the move towards adaptive fisheries management that accounts for climate change impacts on fish stocks, fisheries and the societies that depend upon them.

China's distant water fisheries management policy has made significant contributions to the development of distant water fisheries since 1985. Analyzing the evolution of China's distant water fisheries management policy is conducive to solving China's IUU problems and promoting further development of sustainable fisheries. This paper first summarizes how China's distant water fisheries management policy has evolved, which can be divided into four stages: the start-up period (1985–1990), the rapid development period (1991–1997), the sustainable development period (1998–2007), and the optimization and adjustment period (2008-present). Then the characteristics of current distant water fisheries management are summarized, including how management has adapted to international rules, emphasize sustainable fisheries, diversification and facilitation of management methods. China's distant water fisheries management policy still faces severe challenges in terms of technology, marine rights, management system, industrial structure, and employee capabilities. Finally, this paper highlights the importance of attaching importance to science and technology, re-evaluating distant water fisheries subsidies based on environmental policies and IUU activities, establishing a polycentric governance mechanism with stakeholders at the core, improving the supervision system, and establishing overseas distant water fisheries bases to strengthen international cooperation.

Whether you’re an angler, diver, conservationist, or just interested in fisheries, you’ve likely heard the term “stock assessment” before. What are stock assessments? How do they work? How do they inform management decisions? This publication provides information to the public and people serving in natural resource management agencies and working in outreach and Extension to show how fisheries management decisions are made.

Understanding movement patterns underlies effective management and conservation measures. The current study summarises the main findings from a tagging program of Western Australian sharks to provide insights into the movement patterns of the main commercial shark species: dusky (Carcharhinus obscurus), sandbar (C. plumbeus), gummy (Mustelus antarcticus) and whiskery (Furgaleus macki) sharks. Between 1993 and 2020, >12000 individuals from 52 taxonomic groups were implanted with conventional tags in Western Australia, of which 8.5% were recaptured. Most of the tagged (74.5%) and recaptured (95.8%) individuals belong to the four main commercial shark species. Recaptured individuals of these species, as well as tiger (Galeocerdo cuvier) and bronze whaler (C. brachyurus) sharks showed displacements of >1000km and rates of movement (ROMs) of >10kmday-1, with the exception of whiskery sharks, which showed much slower ROMs (<3kmday-1). Despite tagged dusky and sandbar sharks being predominately small individuals and gummy and whiskery sharks being large individuals, dusky and sandbar sharks had faster ROMs and a greater proportion of recaptures outside the release zone. Our study provided the information required for estimating movement rates across different fishing zones and therefore defining the spatial scale for managing these shark species.

Dogtooth tuna, Gymnosarda unicolor were sampled off the east coast of Australia (southwest Pacific Ocean) from 2007 to 2012. Ages were determined by examining thin transverse sections of their sagittal otoliths and were based on counts of alternating opaque and translucent zones (annual growth increments). Growth was rapid during the first year of life, after which growth in length was much reduced. Parameters of the constrained von Bertalanffy growth function (fork length-at-age) were L∞ = 1164.77 (mm, FL) and K = 0.44 year⁻¹. Preliminary estimates of longevity indicate a maximum observed age of at least 20 years. There was a high degree of variation in the observed length and age of sexual maturity for G. unicolor. Despite this variation, the size at 50% maturity for female G. unicolor estimated in this study was 713 mm FL (<2 years of age). The diet of G. unicolor is very broad and covers a range of fish species. The life history characteristics of G. unicolor overall, indicate that this species may be somewhat resilient to fishing. However, reports of localised depletions, in association with heavy targeting by sports fishers, low effective population sizes and patchy recruitment indicate that this species is particularly vulnerable to overfishing.

Whether you’re an angler, diver, conservationist, or just interested in fisheries, you’ve likely heard the term “stock assessment” before. What are stock assessments? How do they work? How do they inform management decisions? This publication provides information to the public and people serving in natural resource management agencies and working in outreach and Extension to show how fisheries management decisions are made.

Illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing is a negative social vice that adversely affects global capture fishery production. The inadequate disclosure of IUU methods and trends in fishery waters hampers management actions to curb illegal fishing activities. Seldom have empirical studies been conducted on IUU methods and their trends in Lake Naivasha. Therefore, this study analysed data on the fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) during 2012 to 2018 to test for the significance of trends, and compare the enforcement plans to seizures of illegal fishing gear in the lake. The IUU fishing methods included both the types of equipment and the means used to perpetrate illicit capture or acquisition of fish from the lake. The results indicate a 37% reduction of MCS enforcement patrols during 2018 compared to 2012, and a 16% to 100% upsurge in the quantity of seized IUU fishing items. Illegal fishing boats potentially threaten the fishery of Lake Naivasha with an additional fishing effort of 22% above the 176 licensed boats. An average of 10,700 fishing nets seized per year has the potential fishing intensity of 74 gillnets/km² against an ideal intensity of 12 gillnets/km². The frequencies of MCS patrols in Lake Naivasha exhibit no particular trends and likely ineffective in deterring the upsurge of IUU activities, or the evolution of new illegal fishing methods. An increased seizure of illegal fishing boats, outboard engines and gillnets could imply their rampant use in IUU fishing activities. These findings merit a multi‐stakeholder participatory approach to identifying the MCS weaknesses and opportunities for sharing resources to strengthen the fishery management efforts in Lake Naivasha.

Commission Decision of 25 February 2016 setting up a Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, C(2016) 1084, OJ C 74, 26.2.2016, p. 4–10. The Commission may consult the group on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, aquaculture or similar disciplines. This report, on methods for supporting stock assessment in the Mediterranean (STECF-21-02), addresses the data checking and preparation for stock assessment once the data has been submitted following the annual data calls. The report provides an overview of the data errors and quality control carried out on both commercial landings data and MEDITS survey data. The analyses reported also address the small fraction of commercial catch with sampling gaps, and how these are assigned appropriate length frequency distributions. The results of these check and assignments are provided by species, GSA and country. Quality checks were carried out on Medits data check consistency of the main reporting files and highlighting where data inconsistencies occurred. Additionally the total landings reported to the European Commission under the Black & Med-Sea data call, the Fisheries Independent Data call and the Annual Economic Report data call were compared at species aggregated to GSA. Some important differences were observed and these are reported. In addition the EWG reviewed a technical report on the sampling of commercial catch in the Greek Fisheries, the review and some suggested further work are included in this report. | European Union, Joint Research Centre | Published | Refereed

In the one hundred years since sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) were discovered in Lake Erie, the species completed its invasion throughout the Great Lakes basin, contributed to the downfall of the commercial fishing industry, and served as a catalyst for the development of the collaborative fishery management regime that exists today. The sea lamprey invasion simultaneously caused wide-spread devastation while giving rise to a collective realization that the health of the Great Lakes would require ongoing cooperation among governments, scientists, and users of the resource. Since its inception, the effort to control sea lampreys in the Great Lakes has been defined by a “shoot for the moon” mentality. The desperation of communities directly harmed by the sea lamprey invasion, coupled with the determination and unyielding commitment to science by those tasked with addressing the problem, led to the formation of the only reported successful aquatic vertebrate invasive species control program at an ecosystem scale.

The Chair, Fred Kingston (NAFO Secretariat) opened the meeting on Thursday, 18 March 2021 at 10:00 hours. The Chairs and co-Chairs of the NAFO Working Groups were welcome to the virtual meeting (Annex 1).