User menu
The Sustainable Indian Ocean Tuna Initiative (SIOTI) is a large-scale purse seine Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP) in the Indian Ocean. Pre-assessments for the purse seine fishery MSC certification have identified a series of critical improvement goals. Two of them refer to the adoption of harvest strategies (HS) and harvest control rules (HCR) for the three tropical tuna species in the Indian Ocean. This work is a contribution from SIOTI to the ongoing discussions on the IOTC Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) process for the implementation of harvest strategies in the IOTC. This analysis aims at presenting the contribution and recommendations of SIOTI partners and purse seine owners in relation to the process of MSE and HS. The results are collated from two type of questionnaires and indicate that in general the industry prefers stock status and safety indicators to evaluate harvest strategies. There is not a clear indicator on the preferred type of harvest control rule (based vs. empirical). These results need to be taken with caution because the few questionnaires received from the industry. Also note that the current paper does not reflect the views of all SIOTI members since questionnaires are not yet completed for 15 of the 42 vessels in SIOTI. An updated paper will be available in 2019 once the questionnaires are completed by all SIOTI partners.
