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Fisheries monitoring, control and
surveillance (MCS) is a key feature of the
fisheries management process for which FAO
organized an expert consultation in April 1981.
Specialists with long MCS experience attended the
consultation from Australia, Argentina, Canada,
Chile, Fiji, Iceland, Indonesia, New Zealand,
Norway, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom and the
United States of America. The meeting was organized
as part of FAO's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)
programme of assistance to developing coastal
States, and was funded by Norway.
The report of the consultation broadly defined
the MCS elements as:
- Monitoring the continuous requirement
for the measurement of fishing effort
characteristics and resource yields,
- Control the regulatory conditions
under which the exploitation of the resource may
be conducted
- Surveillance the degree and types of
observations required to maintain compliance
with the regulatory controls imposed on fishing
activities.
A section on general guidelines for MCS was
included. The advice given in the report addressed
the need to approach MCS for the specific
conditions existing within an individual coastal
state or region.
Delegates of FAO member States at the Fourteenth
Session of the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI),
26-30 May, 1981, agreed with the recommendations of
the expert consultation by adopting them as a
policy with regard to MCS.
With reference to transfer of knowledge, the
consultation recommended that FAO should continue
to help developing coastal states improve MCS
capabilities for optimal resource use in their
extended economic zones. To this end FAO should
provide assistance through the selective assignment
of experts, by providing advisory missions to
requesting developing states and the preparation
and implementation of training courses within a
regional context. FAO was advised to conduct
workshops within selected regions as a means of
identifying the type of specific training and
development required by the individual region and
the countries within it.
With respect to the identification of
requirements by regional groupings of countries,
three levels of training were suggested:
- Policy level whereby senior policy
makers are involved, so as to better understand
the concepts and practices of monitoring,
control, and surveillance in terms of meeting
the objectives of the coastal state within a
regional context
- System level whereby individuals
responsible for the subject in whole or in part
(such as fishery managers, coast guard, etc) are
trained, including a possible sharing of
facilities and courses that have already been
established in other countries
- Operational level whereby the staff
who are involved in the day to day practical
application of MCS systems are given training
within their respective regions.
The Rome 1981 consultation has been followed by
MCS workshops in a number of regions, most notably
in Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Ghana,
Senegal and Mauritius, for technical staff from
Fisheries Departments in countries of the
respective subregions. Several countries throughout
the world have received technical assistance.
Since 1998, FAO has executed the Inter-regional
Programme of Assistance to Developing Countries for
the Implementation of the Code of Conduct for
Responsible Fisheries (Sub-Programme C: Assistance
to Developing Countries for Upgrading their
Capabilities in Monitoring, Control and
Surveillance). The programme is undertaken within
the FAO/Government of Norway Cooperative Programme.
Regional workshops and training courses in MCS were
held in 1998 in Kuala Lumpur and Kuala Terengganu,
Malaysia, for countries of South and Southeast
Asia; Muscat, Sultanate of Oman in 1999 for
countries of the Northwest Indian Ocean region; and
in Songkhla, Thailand in 2000 for southeast Asian
countries.
More recent developments in MCS have seen the
growing influence of Vessel Monitoring Systems
(VMS). The introduction of very reliable
satellite communications systems and the
complementary development of Global Positioning
Systems (GPS) has enabled fishing vessels to
automatically report their positions to management
authorities at predetermined intervals or when
requested. The initial introduction of these
technologies have been directed at the enforcement
role of MCS but, increasingly, scientists and
managers are realizing the potential of better
communications for their objectives. This increased
role in almost real time information from fishing
vessels of supplementary data such as catch
reporting, fishing activities, analysis of catch
etc. has been termed Integrated Fisheries
Monitoring (IFM).
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reference sources
FAO, 1981. Report on an expert
consultation on monitoring, control and
surveillance systems for fisheries
management, Rome, Italy, 27-30 April 1981.
Rome, FAO, FAO/Norway Cooperative
Programme FAO/GCP/INT/344/NOR, 115 p.
FAO, 1981. Summary report of the expert
consultation on monitoring, control and
surveillance systems for fisheries
management. Rome, FAO COFI/81/4, Add.1,
5p.
Flewwelling, P., 1994. An introduction
to monitoring, control and surveillance
for capture fisheries. FAO Fisheries
Technical Paper No 338. Rome, FAO. 1995.
217p.
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