NGO Future of Fish has reviewed a new online traceability system in the Maldives to monitor the country’s pole-and-line tuna fisheries. The NGO said the new Fisheries Information System (FIS) will help Maldivian fisheries landing catch to the Indian Ocean archipelago meet EU regulation to prevent illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU), by fulfilling all the latest international traceability requirements with regards to catch and vessel reporting. FIS, which took four years to develop, was introduced in August of this year and is monitoring catch logbooks, fish purchase information, fishing vessel license information and catch certificates. Regulation modules incorporated into FIS include catch statistics, licensing, catch certification, fish purchase and transfer. Its data is also sufficient for the reporting requirements of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), which is responsible for managing tuna and tuna-like species in the Indian Ocean and adjacent seas. The FIS is using both catch documentation and catch information to verify [Maldivian tuna] exports, said Keith Flett, strategy director with Future of Fish. It is one of the bigger steps forward that a government has taken to verify that the catch has actually been reported to the government at the point of export. All while trying to meet EU and IUU task force laws. The FIS was welcomed by Mohamed Shainee, minister of fisheries for the Maldives who also said it could be rolled out to a much broader geography. Through our key role at the IOTC, we are actively encouraging fishery improvements beyond our own borders, he said, to safeguard the long-term futures of many more coastal communities in the Indian Ocean and beyond. Maldivian one-by-one tuna fisheries came under greater scrutiny following the EU regulation implemented in Jan. 1, 2010, to prevent, deter and eliminate IUU. Together with the Marine Stewardship Council certification of the skipjack tuna pole-and-line fishery in 2012, new demands were placed on fisheries’ data capture. Additional support for the program came from the International Pole & Line Foundation and its members.