IMPROVEMENT OF KRILL FISHING NOTIFICATION ACCURACY THROUGH NOTIFICATION FEES

Improvement of krill fishing notification accuracy through notification fees
Delegation of the United States
The Commission adopted notification procedures for krill fishing in 2005. These procedures
were intended to improve the Scientific Committee’s ability to provide advice to the
Commission on krill fishing for the coming season. However, grossly inaccurate estimations
of krill catch provided in Members’ notifications have hampered the Scientific Committee’s
ability to properly estimate the seasonal krill catch and to provide robust scientific advice.
Instead, the Scientific Committee’s scarce and valuable time is spent on analyses that are of
limited use due to their inherent inaccuracies. The Scientific Committee has expressed
concern, and the Commission has discussed several times, the lack of accuracy of the
notifications.
The Commission has also noted that the Secretariat incurs an administrative cost when it
processes krill fishing notifications, including notifications from vessels that end up not
fishing. These administrative steps and costs are no different from the more familiar
expenses incurred in processing notifications for Dissostichus spp. fisheries. The
Dissostichus spp. notification processing fees are necessary to maintain a level budget for the
Commission without rising operational and administrative costs, an issue of much concern to
all Commission Members. Not surprisingly, the CCAMLR Performance Review Panel also
considered the need for cost-recovery for CCAMLR’s administrative costs beyond the
Dissostichus spp. fishery: “7.1.1.2 2. ... develop a cost-recovery policy which would be
applied to all commercial fishing operations...”
At CCAMLR’s 2009 Annual Meeting, the SCIC considered a proposal to address cost
recovery for processing krill fishing notifications. The Members considered a variety of
options including elements that would restrict fishing for those vessels that notified but did
not ultimately fish, changes to the Member contribution formula, and a fee system associated
with notifications. In the course of discussions, it was noted that the Secretariat recoups its
costs for processing Dissostichus spp. fishery notifications and that the cost would be
approximately the same to process each krill fishing notification. While the SCIC was unable
to reach agreement on how best to recover the Secretariat’s costs for processing krill fishing
notifications, the discussions generally revealed that whatever method is applied, the
CCAMLR Secretariat’s funds were becoming increasingly scarce and that they would benefit
from some sort of compensatory regime. The discussion did not lead to an agreement on how
to address the cost recovery idea, and the issue was left open for discussion in 2010.