The 2014/15 CCAMLR fishing season has seen significant progress in the fight to combat Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing by vessels on the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) Non-Contracting Party (NCP) IUU vessel list. This paper outlines the recent actions taken by Australia and its near neighbours, including through the Regional Plan of Action to Promote Responsible Fishing Practices Including Combatting IUU Fishing (RPOA-IUU) and notes that international cooperation has been instrumental in the successes seen in 2014/15.

Australia has undertaken an analysis of information relating to the Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing vessel (FV) Kunlun. The vessel was boarded on 26 February 2015 outside the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources Area (CCAMLR Area) in order to verify its right to fly its flag, pursuant to Article 110 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Information obtained during the boarding has informed this analysis.

This analysis is provided to support CCAMLR members in their efforts to investigate or undertake other enforcement action in relation to CCAMLR Non-Contracting Party (NCP) IUU vessels.

Based on our analysis, Australia concludes that:

• Combined international efforts effectively shortened the FV Kunlun’s fishing campaign in the Convention Area in 2014-15

• The majority of fishing was undertaken off the Antarctic coast not far from Australia’s Mawson Research Station in Statistical Division 58.4.2 (SSRU D) between 26 – 31 January 2015

• The average Dissostichus spp greenweight catch rate per gillnet was approximately 4,038kgs

• The vessel spent three weeks fishing for a total catch of 181 tonnes (processed weight from the verified factory production records) that has an estimated value of $USD3.67 million

• On average, demersal gillnets used in 2014-15 fishing season were approximately 4.3 nautical miles in length and took approximately half an hour to set, with multiple sets undertaken per day

The vessel’s catch and effort data did not match the verified factory production records. As a result, it is more likely that the data obtained by the Australian authorities does not represent the FV Kunlun’s daily fishing logbook but is a sample of the fishing activity of three separate vessels, FV Yongding (Zemour 1), FV Kunlun and FV Songhua (Zemour 2).

This paper summarises the implementation of conservation measures dealing with fishing and related activities in the 2014/15 fishing season (CM 41-01 to 41-11, 42-01, 42-02, 51-01 to 51-03, 51-07) including notifications of encounters with vulnerable marine ecosystems (VME) or potential VMEs (CM 22-06, 22-07).

The ABNJ Deep Seas Project ‘Sustainable Fisheries Management and Biodiversity Conservation of Deep-sea Living Marine Resources and Ecosystems in the Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction’ is a five year project designed to enhance sustainability in the use of deep-sea living resources and biodiversity conservation in the ABNJ through the systematic application of an ecosystem approach. The project is led by FAO in partnership with CCAMLR, RFMOs and related organisations and arrangements. The project started in September 2014 and is one of four projects under the Common Oceans Program (www.commonoceans.org).

CCAMLR has been involved in the design and development of the project, and contributes to activities that promote collaboration and sharing of experiences in deep-sea fisheries and associated biodiversity as well as specific activities on capacity building for developing countries. This contribution is coordinated by the CCAMLR Secretariat and included expert contributions from the Chair of the Scientific Committee and the Convener of WG-FSA in 2015. Project achievement to date and upcoming activities of relevance to CCAMLR are highlighted. 

The Secretariat has embarked on a major overhaul of CCAMLR data holdings and associated IT and data infrastructure. This work, which begun in 2013, includes developing an Enterprise Data Model, redeveloping the CCAMLR database, improving data quality assurance, and modernising the data work flow.

The user community can expect to notice significant improvements in data quality, database documentation and ease of use as the new system begins a process of acceptance testing from late 2015. Consequential changes will be required in requested data extracts to reflect the new data model and nomenclature.

This paper provides an update on progress, including work undertaken since WG-SAM-15 and WG-EMM-15.

We presented five sensitive runs of single-sex age-structured CASAL models for stock status assessments of Dissostichus eleginoides in the research block 58.4.4b_1 in the last WG-SAM meeting. IUU catch was estimated within the models using disease mortality functionality. Among them, the plausible model was considered as OB_1b model, which removed tag and CPUE observations in 2008, because the fits to CPUE in 2008 and MPD profiles for tags in the same year was spurious in OB_1a model which included all observations. The Working Group, however, requested the further examination of the sensitivity to the 2008 tag data, along with the IUU selectivity modeled as a double normal function. The Working Group also requested that projections be presented to WG-FSA for this assessment that examine the consequences of different harvest levels for the time to recovery to the target level.

We revised to retain tag data in 2008 for OB_1b and other relevant models following the recommendations. The total IUU catches in the revised OB_1b model were estimated to be 71 tonnes, which corresponded 43 % of that (163 tonnes) in the same model of the last WG-SAM report. The median MCMC estimates of the initial and current biomass were 610 and 330 tonnes in the revised OB_1b model. The CCAMLR yield was calculated at 30 tonnes. Any harvest level lead to the CCAMLR risk 2 value > 50% in the beginning of 35 year projection period, and the CCAMLR yield 30 tonnes lead to the period as 24 years (between 2015 and 2038). We estimated the depredation rates by killer whales in the separated document. When depredation rate of 25 % by killer whales constantly occurs, the CCAMLR yield should be reduced to 22.5 tonnes.

We revised sensitivity runs of age-structured and two fisheries (≥1 300 m and < 1 300 m) CASAL models for stock status assessments of Dissostichus eleginoides in the research block 58.4.3a_1 following the recommendations of the last WG-SAM meeting. Total of four runs were carried out. Among them three runs were carried out using the latest information on age-length relationship in this division: two catch at length models including (ELAN_len model) or excluding (ELAN_tag model) the data from fish tagged in 2012, and a catch at age model including the data with a single age length key applied to all years (ELAN_age model). Another run was a catch at length model as ELAN_len model except using age-length relationship for Ob-Lena Banks (ELAN_lenOB).

The likelihood profiles for tagged fish released in 2012 for ELAN_len, ELAN_age and ELAN_lenOB models reflected a large number of recaptures of the tags released concentrated in the western area of research block. This is why the removal of 2012 tag release data boosted the MPD estimate of B₀ in ELAN_tag model. The selectivity of the right hand limb of deep fishery was poorly estimated in MCMC runs for ELAN_len model.

The median MCMC estimates of the initial and current biomass for ELAN_len model were 330 and 260 tonnes and the CCMLR yield for this stock was calculated at 30 tonnes. The fishing bias to the shallow areas should be avoided because the CCAMLR risk 2 values at 13 tonnes and above for the shallow fishery exceed 50% toward the end of 35 year projection period in the model.