This step-wise guide aims to assist with the implementation of relevant international instruments pertaining to deep-sea fisheries and biodiversity conservation in areas beyond national jurisdiction, especially the high seas, into national policy and law. This guide focuses on the incorporation and transposition of international rules, standards, and recommended practices and procedures into national policy and law. It addresses the key measures for making international obligations effective at the national level and suggests possible options for integrating those measures into the national legal framework. Legislative examples are also provided to illustrate how certain provisions have been incorporated into primary or secondary legislation. The guide first addresses the establishment of a national policy, followed by a description and analysis of essential legislative provisions regarding deep-sea fisheries and the conservation of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This guide is thus relevant to policy-makers, parliamentary draftpersons, and parliamentarians. 

Following the series of workshops on biodegradable Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) that ISSF has been conducting with the support of FAO, Common Oceans ABNJ Tuna Project in the western Pacific Ocean, a workshop in Zadar (Croatia) was organized. Zadar is homeport of the fleet (fishing masters and first officers), from Caroline Fisheries Corporation (CFC), a purse seine company based in Pohnpei (Federated States of Micronesia). The general objective of the workshop was to promote the use of non-entangling and biodegradable FADs in the fleet and set the protocol to test 100 biodegradable FADs with CFC fleet.

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing is a serious threat to sustainable fisheries, marine ecosystems and the livelihoods of legitimate fishers globally. To address this threat, the Common Oceans ABNJ Tuna Project is exploring new ways to strengthen and harmonize the use of monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) tools, and combat IUU fishing in tuna fisheries across the marine areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). One of the MCS tools that the Project has explored extensively, is the use of Electronic Monitoring Systems (EMS) to monitor individual vessel operations at sea. To test the best way to incorporate this new monitoring technology to the MCS toolbox available, two pilot activities were set up in Fiji and Ghana were EMS equipment was deployed aboard tuna fishing vessels.