FAO provides workshop and training to various officers in Guinea
A two-day workshop, on improving data collection for monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) purposes, was organised in Guinea by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Around 20 participants from the fishery industry and various departments of the Ministry of Fisheries met to exchange their experiences and expectations on the use of the logbook and to discuss improvements to its format. Logbook use was introduced in Guinea in 2022. However, fishing inspectors and Fishing Monitoring Centre agents have not been able to use it as an effective tool to monitor fishing activities due to the design of the logbook which currently does not fully address practitioners’ needs.
The FAO workshop sought to empower the various fisheries management, MCS, research, and sanitary officers and fishery companies to identify needs and define appropriate adjustments required in the logbook. The ultimate purpose is to help strengthen data collection for better fishery management and to enable MCS officers to use this tool to effectively inspect fisheries activities on board fishing vessels and therefore to carry out improved MCS activities to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
The workshop led to a further two days of training, provided by FAO experts, to around 15 agents of the national Centre National de Surveillance des Pêches on the role and functions of the Fisheries Monitoring Centre in combatting IUU fishing. A final one-day training session was also provided to the same agents, on the use of the recently launched PSMA Global Information Exchange System (GIES).
This intensive FAO training was provided between the 24 – 29 March 2024, under the GCP/GLO/352/NOR project funded by Norway.