In an attempt to further the discussions held at 2023’s Tokyo Sustainable Seafood Summit (TSSS), an industry workshop took place after the event that aimed to get sweeping opinions on the merit of using electronic monitoring (EM) on vessels operating within the waters overseen by regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs).
The latest edition of TSSS, which took place in October 2023, included talks on preventing labor abuse in the seafood supply chain, blue finance strategies, and actions the industry could take to limit illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
Seeking to take advantage of the momentum TSSS generated through such discussions, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Seafood Legacy, and the Global Tuna Alliance – represented in Japan by Gunther Errhalt, a fisheries and maritime security consultant at Errhalt Consulting who also works closely with the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA) in Japan – gathered industry leaders to discuss EM in detail.
EM entails the use of cameras, sensors, and computers to collect accurate and timely information regarding fishing catch and vessel activity. Implementing EM devices is useful not only for verifying the amount of target species caught but also for observing bycatch and such activities as high-grading and illegal transshipments, several NGOs have argued.
Though 66 percent of all global tuna landings are caught in the Pacific Ocean, many longliner fishing vessels in the region are only required to have ...
Photo courtesy of Errhalt Consulting
