Fisheries data collection working group: significant progress for Somalia's fisheries

In November 2017, Somalia participated in the 13th WPDCS and presented a paper on the establishment of centralized data collection nationwide.  The following year, Somalia took action to improve the catch data collection system for pelagic fisheries through Project Kalluun—a partnership between the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR), City University, Secure Fisheries, and FAO—and to pilot new fisheries data collection and community engagement. Its objective is to strengthen the data collection, processing, and reporting system to enhance the quality of data by increasing coverage and representativeness. Efforts have been made to improve sampling area selection, train data collectors on sampling and species identification, and revise data forms. Special attention was paid to identify and record species managed by the IOTC.

In October 2019, the Federal Government of Somalia began the Fisheries Data Collection Working Group (FDCWG).^[1] The pilot project was led by Secure Fisheries, a program of One Earth Future Foundation. A team of Technical Working Group members, civil society representatives, and representatives from the Ministries of Fisheries and Marine Resources of the Federal Government of Somalia, and the Federal Member States of Jubaland, Southwest, Galmudug, HirShabelle, and Puntland, held an initial workshop to adopt a harmonized data collection protocol, fish identification guide, and set of data collection forms. Starting in late December 2019, a team of enumerators at the following fish landing sites began collecting catch and effort data from fishing vessels, three times per week: Kismayo, Merca, Mogadishu, Adale, Hobyo, and Bosaso. This effort has resulted in the creation of a catch database that holds the first nation-wide effort to rigorously collect scientifically valid fisheries catch data in Somalia in over 30 years.

^[1] The FDCWG Project was supported by the Youth Employment Somalia (YES) project funded by the UN Multi-Donor Trust Fund but with particular funding provided by Italian Agency for Development Co-operation for this work and the Coastal Communities Against Piracy (CCAP) Project funded by the European Union.