7. The Chair welcomed all the members of ACFR and the FAO Fisheries Department staff in attendance. She thanked the Fisheries Department staff for the excellent preparations for the meeting and the follow through from the Fourth Session of ACFR. She noted with regret that this would be Dr Satia's last meeting as Secretary to ACFR as he would shortly be retiring from FAO. ACFR had found Dr Satia's intellectual input and operational support to be outstanding.
8. The Chair reminded the Committee of the role of ACFR as a statutory body of FAO to advise the Director-General on research and research-related matters for fisheries and aquaculture. To better discharge this duty, ACFR had brought its biennial meeting forward by two months to enable its advice to be provided as fully as possible to the forthcoming meeting of COFI. She also noted that, at the Fourth Session of ACFR, the Committee agreed that, intersessionally, priority should be given to the Working Party on Small-scale Fisheries (SSF) and the "mega-priority cross cutting" issue of human capacity development for fisheries. Both small-scale fisheries and human capacity development would be addressed by the agenda of the Fifth Session of ACFR, as well as the review of the FAO work programme, with a focus on inland fisheries and aquaculture and on fish utilization and trade. The Fisheries Department noted that ACFR issues had been dominated by capture fisheries and marine fisheries issues to the present. Also, the Committee must look ahead and identify topics for future work with and for FAO, including building on the achievements with intersessional progress on small-scale fisheries and human capacity development.
9. The Chair noted that ACFR's links with COFI were strengthening and that the report of this session would be provided to the forthcoming session of COFI as an information paper. The Chair also usually attended to support the Committee's advice on key topics. She also noted that individual ACFR members were establishing an excellent track record of following through on special topics for intersessional work by FAO and encouraged them to keep in mind at this meeting where they could contribute to the follow-up.
10. Finally, she indicated that the Committee would be paying more attention to communicating the results of its work, in addition to the traditional formal report. A press release would be developed from this meeting for use by FAO and she would be presenting a verbal report to the Department staff at the end of the Session. The Committee should consider other communication methods on individual agenda issues or the whole of its work also.
