Collaboration type:  Adoption of the BlueBRIDGE services

About IOTC: The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) is an intergovernmental organisation responsible for the management of tuna and tuna-like species in the Indian Ocean. It works to achieve this by promoting cooperation among its Contracting Parties (Members) and Cooperating Non-Contracting Parties in order to ensure the conservation and appropriate utilisation of fish stocks and encouraging the sustainable development of fisheries (from  IOTC Website).

Short description of the collaboration & main achievements in the period:  IRD has set up different VREs to work with IOTC on different topics (Stock Assessment VRE to simulate FAD trajectories, Tuna Atlas VRE to manage tuna fisheries data, IOTC_SS3 VRE for stock assessment of tropical tuna species).  These VREs have been presented and discussed with other colleagues during IOTC working parties: Working parties on Methods (WPM), working party on Tropical Tunas (WPTT), working party on Data Collection and Statistics (WPDCS):

• WPM meeting objectives are to review and analyse methodological issues relevant to the assessment of the status of species under the IOTC mandate (outcomes are usually applicable to many of the other Working Parties). During these meetings, we had the opportunity to present to validate and start the work on IOTC stock assessment model (SS3),
• WPTT meeting objectives are to review and analyse issues relevant to the fisheries and status of the three tropical tuna species under the IOTC mandate.
• WPDCS meeting objectives are to review the quality of the statistics available for tuna, tuna-like, and other species of interest to the IOTC, and to review the status of collection, processing, and reporting of data, as required by the Commission. Based on this review, the Working Party recommends actions to improve the quality of statistics in countries having data collection or reporting that falls short of the IOTC requirements. The WPDCS has also the role of compiling data recommendations relating to species covered by other working parties and follow-up on the implementation of these actions in the countries concerned.

Plans for the future: the reports of IOTC meetings have welcomed the online approach of VREs and encouraged the team to make plans for how this will be maintained and updated after the end of the project in 2018 and after 2020 (regarding the availability of the infrastructure). No funding will be provided by IOTC but some work will be pursued on VREs by some colleagues or researchers involved in IOTC working groups.