Improving information of data-poor stocks and fisheries: a new scientific observer programme onboard a shrimper fleet in Angola (SW Africa)

Abstract

The EU’s Regulation on the Sustainable Management of External Fishing Fleets (SMEFF, 2017) was established within the framework of the External Fisheries dimension of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Since the 1960s, Angola has been a traditional fishing ground for a Spanish fleet of deep-sea shrimp trawlers, mainly targeting Parapenaeus longirostris and Aristeus varidens. Since 2004, this fishery has been conducted through direct fishing authorizations and currently, in compliance with the SMEFF, scientific evaluations to demonstrate the sustainability of the fishery must be provided to fish in a third country with this system. Only P. longirostris has been assessed so far by the Fishery Committee for the Eastern Central Atlantic (CECAF), with great limitations due to the lack of consistent fishery information and biological data. Since 2018, the IEO has implemented a scientific observer program onboard this fleet with the aim of obtaining the most reliable fishery and biological information for assessment purposes. This involves the collection of information such as: catch by species and biological data enabling the estimation of volume and length frequency of all catch fractions, biological parameters of target stocks, information for assessing the fishing impact on the marine ecosystem and detailed data on the activity of the fleet. A summary of the designed programme and the main fishery and biological information obtained during the first observed annual cycle is presented, as a starting point of a long-term monitoring program that together with other sources (logbooks, VMS) would increase the quantity and quality of the data needed for improving the assessments of these Angolan stocks.