IMPROVEMENT OF KRILL FISHING NOTIFICATION ACCURACY THROUGH NOTIFICATION FEES

Improvement of krill fishing notification accuracy through notification fees

Delegation of the United States

The Commission adopted notification procedures for krill fishing in 2005. These procedures

were intended to improve the Scientific Committee’s ability to provide advice to the

Commission on krill fishing for the coming season. However, grossly inaccurate estimations

of krill catch provided in Members’ notifications have hampered the Scientific Committee’s

ability to properly estimate the seasonal krill catch and to provide robust scientific advice.

Instead, the Scientific Committee’s scarce and valuable time is spent on analyses that are of

limited use due to their inherent inaccuracies. The Scientific Committee has expressed

concern, and the Commission has discussed several times, the lack of accuracy of the

notifications.

The Commission has also noted that the Secretariat incurs an administrative cost when it

processes krill fishing notifications, including notifications from vessels that end up not

fishing. These administrative steps and costs are no different from the more familiar

expenses incurred in processing notifications for Dissostichus spp. fisheries. The

Dissostichus spp. notification processing fees are necessary to maintain a level budget for the

Commission without rising operational and administrative costs, an issue of much concern to

all Commission Members. Not surprisingly, the CCAMLR Performance Review Panel also

considered the need for cost-recovery for CCAMLR’s administrative costs beyond the

Dissostichus spp. fishery: “7.1.1.2 2. ... develop a cost-recovery policy which would be

applied to all commercial fishing operations...”

At CCAMLR’s 2009 Annual Meeting, the SCIC considered a proposal to address cost

recovery for processing krill fishing notifications. The Members considered a variety of

options including elements that would restrict fishing for those vessels that notified but did

not ultimately fish, changes to the Member contribution formula, and a fee system associated

with notifications. In the course of discussions, it was noted that the Secretariat recoups its

costs for processing Dissostichus spp. fishery notifications and that the cost would be

approximately the same to process each krill fishing notification. While the SCIC was unable

to reach agreement on how best to recover the Secretariat’s costs for processing krill fishing

notifications, the discussions generally revealed that whatever method is applied, the

CCAMLR Secretariat’s funds were becoming increasingly scarce and that they would benefit

from some sort of compensatory regime. The discussion did not lead to an agreement on how

to address the cost recovery idea, and the issue was left open for discussion in 2010.