ACAP Guidelines on Fisheries Electronic Monitoring Systems

As fisheries with seabird interactions increasingly use electronic monitoring (EM) systems to meet monitoring requirements, ACAP recognizes the need for guidelines for EM systems to meet objectives of monitoring seabird interactions. These can then serve to inform and strengthen the development of guidelines and minimum standards for full EM systems (e.g., under development by some of the tuna regional fisheries management organisations) by accounting for the partial, seabird-related requirements of EM systems.

Fisheries monitoring programmes supply data required for fundamental scientific, compliance monitoring and ecological and social sustainability assessment applications. EM systems are increasingly being used to complement and replace conventional human onboard observer programmes and to initiate at-sea monitoring where none previously existed. There have been 100 fisheries EM pilot projects since the first in 1999. There are now 12 fully implemented programmes. EM has the capacity to fill a vast gap in monitoring the world’s 4.6 million fishing vessels.

EM systems typically use onboard cameras, global positioning systems, sensors and data loggers to collect information on fishing, transshipment and supply vessel activities. EM systems can be implemented through either formal programmes of national or regional management authorities, or they may be voluntary programmes. EM systems can collect most but not all data fields of observer programmes. When properly designed, EM systems have several advantages over conventional human observer programmes, including overcoming main sources of statistical sampling bias, allowing at-sea monitoring of small-scale fishing and support vessels that present various challenges for placement of human observers, enabling multiple areas of vessels to be monitored simultaneously and near-continuously, and allowing questionable data to be audited and corrected.

These voluntary guidelines define how fisheries EM systems can be designed to meet three common objectives of fisheries monitoring programmes of (1) scientific, (2) compliance, and (3) management performance assessment as they relate to seabird interactions. However, ACAP recognises that not all EM systems are employed to meet all three of these objectives, where a subset of the full suite of data fields identified in ACAP’s guidelines would need to be included for an EM system selecting a narrower subset of objectives.

While the EM camera setup needs to be customised according to the configuration of individual vessels, the number and type of cameras and fields of view to meet all of the aforementioned seabird monitoring objectives should, at a minimum, enable EM analysts to detect the following essential categories of data fields:

• Seabird captures (during hauling for longline and gillnet, when trawling, during all fishing operations for purse seine), to the species level when feasible, including catch that crew remove from gear in the water at night;
• Observable components of post-capture mortality of at-vessel condition, fate (retained or not retained) and release condition;
• Information on seabird tags;
• Trawl warp strikes when towing;
• Use of seabird bycatch mitigation methods; and
• Variables that significantly explain seabird catch and post-capture mortality risks.

This subset of categories of essential data fields excludes those that are already likely to be collected by a fisheries monitoring programme. Instead, the data fields identified in these ACAP EM guidelines are specific to seabird-related objectives of monitoring. ACAP’s Data Collection Guidelines for Observer Programmes to Improve Knowledge of Fishery Impacts on ACAP-Listed Species provides a comprehensive list of essential data fields for inclusion in observer programmes to meet seabird-related objectives of monitoring.

A subset of the essential data fields would be appropriate for an EM system selecting a narrower scope of objectives. For example, managers and other stakeholders of a fishery with a large number of small vessels with no prior at-sea monitoring, and no seabird bycatch management strategy, may establish an EM system designed to obtain basic information on when, where and the magnitude of seabird bycatch.

Optimal EM systems would be designed to enable EM analysts to detect a larger suite of data fields, enabling stakeholders to more robustly meet their scientific, compliance monitoring and performance assessment monitoring objectives. The ACAP EM guidelines identifies these essential data fields for the same gear types as included for the databases of essential data fields.

The ACAP EM Guidelines include databases containing detailed descriptions of data fields and data collection protocols for EM systems for seabird interactions in: (1) pelagic longline, (2) demersal longline, (3) trawl, (4) anchored and staked gillnet and trammel net and drift gillnet, and (5) non-tuna purse seine fisheries.

ACAP’s EM guidelines also describe the role of fisher cooperation and complementary dockside monitoring to enable effective monitoring, and reviews considerations related to monitoring coverage rates and sampling designs. An EM audit model, employed in Australia is presented as an optimal approach to balancing costs with monitoring and compliance benefits. The EM guidelines describe fundamental, basic features of EM systems to enable meeting seabird-related monitoring objectives, ranging from independent assessments to determine whether an EM programme meets standards, rules on confidentiality and privacy, to technical specifications for EM equipment such as to ensure that EM data are tamper-proof.