FAO.org

Bogotá, February 2 2018. The National Working Group of the REBYC-II LAC project in Colombia, held the fourth work meeting where the main advances, limitations and next steps were presented and discussed. This Group is composed by FAO, INVEMAR, AUNAP (Fishing Authority), the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, WWF Colombia, the University of Magdalena and representatives of the artisanal and industrial fishing.

Among the results obtained we can mention: the draft of the management plan for shrimp bycatch; the legal assessment of the national normative framework for shrimp fisheries, the legal recommendations for the strengthening of the institutional structure around bycatch, the biological, social and economic baseline of shrimp bycatch fisheries based on the four pilot sites, the development of designs and construction of prototype trawl nets, the fishing agreements with one of them raised to resolution by AUNAP, the preliminary experimental testing of trawl nets/BRDs, the training of more than 50 fishermen in new fishing technologies, and the identification of drivers of incidental catch and discards in Colombia. Among the difficulties encountered is the delay of administrative procedures at the regional and national levels. To resolve this, actions were taken to minimize delays in the execution of the project in its second year. Among the steps to follow are the culmination of the fishing experiments, continue the fishing on board monitoring, prepare the national fishery management plan using the ecosystem approach, the creation of the National Management Committee and the start of the valuation of the chain of value of shrimp bycatch focused on industrial fishing on the Pacific.

Finally, in order to generate key information among the members of the Working Group, it was carried out with the support of Conservation International, a work activity in groups to identify functions, formalization, representativeness and scope of the National Committee of Management of the shrimp bycatch.