Combating IUU Fishing
Electronic Monitoring
Electronic monitoring (EM) can help improve the transparency and traceability of seafood products.
New research from Sustainable Fisheries Partnership looks at the potential for electronic monitoring (EM) to meet growing requirements for stronger transparency, traceability, and verification in seafood production and trade supply chains. EM can replace traditional in-person fisheries monitoring systems that can be expensive and inefficient, and are often not feasible to implement in many of the world’s fisheries. Effective implementation of EM systems can allow for comprehensive data gathering and compliance with government and corporate requirements and standards.
The technical report provides guidance and recommendations for fisheries managers, regulators, and the seafood industry on how to design and implement EM systems.
The industry briefing provides a summary of the use and benefits of EM and offers recommendations for how end buyers can help support the broader adoption of EM.
In the industry briefing, SFP recommends end buyers take the following actions to support broader uptake of EM systems:
- Identify high-risk source fisheries and request source vessel identification information
- Ask governments and regulators to increase requirements for EM in high-risk fisheries
- Encourage your suppliers and source vessels to ask governments and regulators to involve them in EM program design
- Set a public, time-bound commitment to source only from fishing vessels using human or electronic monitoring in higher risk commodities or sectors
- Establish a verification system to measure progress toward public commitments.
Increase the use of electronic monitoring
To learn more about how you can support the development and implementation of EM programs in the world’s higher risk fisheries, please contact SFP.