A new Fisheries Information System (FIS) has been launched for one-by-one tuna fisheries in the Maldives intended to monitor catch logbooks, fish purchase information, fishing vessel licence information and catch certificates. The system was presented by John Burton, Chairman of the International Pole & Line Foundation (IPNLF), at a special ceremony attended by the Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture for the Maldives, Dr Mohamed Shainee. Today, we’re working closer than ever with local fishing NGOs, government, scientists and the commercial industry to ensure the country’s traditional one-by-one fisheries continue to be managed as responsibly as possible, while providing sustainable employment for Maldivian fishing communities, pointed out Burton. This unified and integrated web-enabled database will allow the Maldives’ one-by-one tuna fisheries to fulfil all the latest international traceability requirements with regards to catch and vessel reporting. Work on the system began in July 2012 after the implementation of the EU Regulation to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU), which together with the successful Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification of the skipjack tuna pole-and-line fishery in 2012, placed new demands on fisheries data capture in the Maldives. These developments required the tracking and supply of new fishery information previously not collected. In order to fulfil such needs, the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture (MoFA) introduced logbooks and the requirement for fishermen to complete entries for every fishing trip, with this information going directly to the Ministry. Because of the significant additional burden placed upon the logbook software that was in place at that time, the decision was taken to build a new dynamic system capable of meeting the fisheries’ needs for many years to come. The new system was developed through generous support from the non-profit IPNLF and its Members Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury and World Wise Foods. Significantly, this backing also enabled the hiring of a database specialist to work full-time at the Marine Research Centre of the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture. With the FIS now in place, we have an excellent opportunity to progress the Maldives’ one-by-one fisheries even further, and particular thanks goes to Minister Shainee and his team at MoFA for their considerable support throughout. However, the FIS development work certainly hasn’t stopped, it is being expanded to a second phase that includes automating catch reporting from fishing vessels, and we look forward to sharing details of that progress in due course, Burton concluded.
1995 – 2016 Fish Info & Services Co.Ltd.