Proceedings from a conference on Remote Electronic Monitoring in fisheries, held in Reykjavík 7 Nov. 2019

• Published in: Archives of Public Health
• Main Authors: Viðarsson, Jónas R., Ulrich, Clara, Holah, Helen, Schreiber Plet-Hansen, Kristian, Magnússon, Leifur, González, Luis Alberto Cocas, Monsen, Thord, Erikson, Wes
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2021
• Subjects: Fisheries; Monitoring; Control; Surveillance; Remote Electronic Monitoring; Fisheries management; CCTV; Iceland; Reykjavík
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5336444

Monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) are challenging in wild capture fisheries and insufficient MCS has resulted in unsustainable fishing practices, data limitations in stock assessment and management, lack of transparency and unfair competitive advantage for those not following the rules. Major expenses and efforts are awarded to MCS, but effectiveness and coverage is generally very limited. There are however a number of emerging and already available technological solutions that can be applied to significantly improve MCS and reduce costs at the same time. These solutions are generally referred to as Electronic Monitoring (EM) or Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) solutions. The Nordic countries are generally considered to have well-regulated fisheries and relatively good MCS. The authorities in these countries do however also understand that they need to keep up with new technology and use them when applicable to improve their fisheries. Denmark, Norway and Iceland have for example been awarding increasing attention to REM in recent years. As part of that work, the Nordic Council’s Working Group for Fisheries (AG-Fisk) funded a networking project in 2019 that was to facilitate a conference on REM, where experts in the field would present information on current state and emerging solutions for Fully Documented Fisheries (FDF). The conference was held in November 2019 in Reykjavík and the proceedings along with short summary are presented in this report. The report also contains concluding remarks in the end where the most important issues are summarised, and comments made on developments that have taken place from the time of the conference until the publication of this report. It is evident that EM will not solve all problems when it comes to MCS of fisheries, but such solutions can be important tools to facilitate more efficient MCS and even reduce cost and/or increase coverage. The Nordic countries have not been in the forefront of implementing REM technologies (possibly with the exception of Denmark) ...