The third Project Steering Committee (PSC) meeting of the ABNJ Deep Seas Project was held at WCMC headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom from 17-18 April 2018. The meeting was attended by representatives of 13 project partners, including the FAO and UNEP-WCMC. The primary objective of this PSC meeting was to discuss the results of the Mid-Term Review (MTR), which covered the time period from the project start date to December 2017.

This webinar discusses the importance of data and metadata in areas beyond national jurisdiction: Work undertaken to create a metadata inventory of relevant data suitable for use in area-based planning in the regions; Data storage options in the two pilot regions, to help understand the current situation and highlight potential for improvement in the future, including regional and global data relevant for area-based planning. 

This webinar discusses a range of planning and management tools for use in areas beyond national jurisdiction: - Available area-based planning tools for ABNJ; - Key features that enable them to be used for cross-sectoral area-based planning in support of the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in ABNJ; - Recommendations based on analysis undertaken to guide the development of a dedicated area-based planning methodology. Also available in Spanish.

A ressing the need to enhance sustainability in the use of deep-sea living resources and biodiversity conservation in in the ABNJ, is the Common Oceans ABNJ Deep Seas Project, one of the Projects of the Global sustainable fisheries management and biodiversity conservation in the ABNJ Program (Common Oceans ABNJ Program), supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).  The Project, led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN-FAO) and United Nations Environment (UNEP), brings together a broad range of partners working on conservation issues in the ABNJ globally. The partnership includes the regional fisheries bodies responsible for the management of deep-sea fisheries, Regional Seas Programmes, fishing industry partners and international organizations.  

This paper discusses the potential value of catch documentation schemes (CDS) in deep-sea fisheries (DSF), and the implementation modalities that have to be envisaged, to ensure the effectiveness of this trade-based tool to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The paper argues that CDS are indeed capable of directly addressing a number of IUU fishing practices known to occur in DSF, and that their adoption would improve compliance with fisheries management requirements. Key infringements that may be directly detected and addressed through a CDS include – but are not limited to – violations of closed areas harbouring protected vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs) in the deep ocean, and quota overfishing. The paper also establishes the notion that partial coverage of given species through a CDS at the level of individual RFMOs is incongruous from a trade monitoring and control perspective, and that CDS should be considered as either/or propositions with regard to species coverage. With most DSF species having broad distributions straddling many RFMOs, the implementation modality that avails itself as the most suitable option, enabling the operation of an effective CDS, is that of a centrally operated electronic CDS platform – called a super-CDS – shared by a plurality of institutional and state players.