- Objectives
- Conduct an assessment for South Pacific swordfish
- Background
- The South Pacific swordfish stock has not been assessed since 2011.
- The longline fishery has recently increased targeting of swordfish
- An updated assessment is needed to provide management advice
- Relevance for management
- The stock assessment is needed to provide management advice
- Duration
- 36 months
- Workplan and status
- Organize a workshop to review the knowledge and start the collaborations
- Obtain data
- Report progress to SAC-12 in 2021
- Pending on data submission by main fishing fleets:
- Host a second workshop to discuss the data and other model inputs
- Conduct assessment
- Host a third workshop to discussion of modelling results
- Report to SAC-13 in 2022
- External collaborators
- Scientists from Chile, European Union, Peru, Japan, Korea, Chinese Taipei, China and the Pacific Community (SPC)
- Deliverables
- Report to SAC-12 in 2021
Report to SAC-13 in 2022
- Updated date: 01 May 2021
- Progress summary for the reporting period
- Progress on this project to date is incidental to research on other topics (CAPAM workshop on spatio-temporal models; workshop on longline indices of abundance
- February 2019: Exploratory work for the workshop included analyses that used the data for swordfish.
- Contacts in key areas of expertise have been established to start collaborative work
- Ongoing since August 2020 Collaboration with Chile regarding the workshop organization and data sharing
- December 2021: The 1st Technical Workshop on Swordfish in the South EPO was organized and took place virtually
- December 2021: An MOU was signed with Korea to use their operational-level catch and effort data
- February 2021: Collaborative work was undertaken with Japan to construct indices of abundance
- Ongoing since January 2021: communication with Spain and Ecuador regarding data sharing
- March 2021: Presentation at the ISC Billfish working group meeting on the discussions that took place during the 1st Technical Workshop on Swordfish
- March 2021: Participation on the 2021 SPC Pre-Assessment workshop, when discussion about the S WCPO swordfish assessment took place
- Challenges and key lessons learnt
- Access to operational longline data is essential for conducting the assessment and has been delayed in some cases, and not possible in others, this had the delayed the work and an adjustment of the workplan is needed
- Collaboration with CPCs is needed to complete the assessment
- A successful workshop was possible due to a mix of recorded presentations and short live discussions
- In 2021 all stocks of swordfish will be assessed, the discussions in several fora for a about those assessments have shown a synergic effect and it is likely that all assessments will benefit from continuing the dialog among the modelers
- New workshops to foster the collaboration among CPCs and other scientists should have a positive impact on the quality of the assessment
- Report of the 1st Technical Workshop on swordfish in the S EPO
- SAC-12-07 South EPO swordfish assessment: progress report
