Topics discussed were: changes in the membership of CWP; review of recommendations from CWP-18; reports of intersessional meetings; the Meeting of Agencies Participating in the Fisheries Global Information System/Fishery Resource Monitoring System (9 July 2001); reports on intersessional developments in agency programmes in fishery statistics...

This document contains the report of the twenty-sixth Session of the Coordinating Working party on Fisheries Statistics (CWP) and meetings of the Aquaculture Subject Group and Fishery Subject Group held in Rome, Italy, from 15-18 May 2019. The CWP provides a mechanism to coordinate the statistical programs conducted by intergovernmental organizations including regional fishery bodies with a remit for fishery statistics. Ten CWP Members, two observers’ regional fishery bodies and three invited international and national organizations participated in the meetings.

Three major topics were considered. The first concerned the future role of the CWP following its reconstitution and the adoption of new statutes and rules of procedure. The second major topic concerned international initiatives of relevance to the CWP. The third major topic concerned the improvement of the reliability of fishery statistics, including consideration of the consequences and extent of the problem of non-reporting and mis-reporting. Other topics considered included a review of recommendations from the Fifteenth Session of CWP; modifications to programmes in relation to fishery statistics; exchange of national fishery statistics on electronic media; modifications to STATLANT questionnaires; discrepencies among agency databases; bycatch and discard data; recreational and subsistence fishery statistics; fleet statistics; aquaculture statistics; conversion factors; country and nationality issues, and economic statistics.

Topics discussed at this meeting included options for enhancing regional fishery bodies and the FishCode Strategy for Improving Information on Status and Trends of Capture Fisheries partnership; a review of progress by member organisations; aquaculture statistics; issues related to vessel and port classification; fishery data quality indicators; and the status of FishStat Plus.

The report of the thirteenth session of the Coordinating Working Party on Atlantic Fishery Statistics (CWP) held in Rome, Italy, 11-18 February 1987, is presented. The EC Commission, FAO, ICCAT, ICES, ICSEAF, NAFO, OECD were the participating agencies. Major topics considered were: review of recommendations and proposals from CWP-12 and progress; agency programmes and publications presenting Atlantic fishery statistics; statistics on discards; review of the operation of the STATLANT system; procedures for handling discrepancies in databases; Ad-Hoc Global Consultation on Tuna Statistics; integration of value data into databases; STATLANT B data; handbook of fishery statistics; aquaculture enquiries; fishing fleet statistics; nationality issues; food balance sheets.

This document contains the report of the Fifth Meeting of the Aquaculture Subject Group and the Twenty-sixth meeting of the Fisheries Subject of CWP, held during the Intersessional Aquaculture and Fisheries Subject Group meeting of the Coordinating Working Party on Fishery Statistics (CWP-IS), which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 19 to 22 June 2017. The work was organized between joint sessions to address issues of general interest, with the Subject Groups – Aquaculture (CWP-AS) and Fis heries (CWP-FS) –organized in concurrent sessions, to address matters related to the intersessional programme for each Subject Group. The meeting reviewed the progress made since the Twenty-fifth session of the CWP and agreed on actions for the second part of the intersessional period, prior to the upcoming Twenty-sixth session of the CWP to be held early in 2019. The main issues presented and discussed were the dissemination of the revised handbook on the CWP web page and the further enhancemen t of the socio-economic and GIS section of the handbook, the CWP ad hoc task group on “reference harmonization for capture fisheries and aquaculture statistics”, and the progress made by the Task Force in establishing the standard aquaculture questionnaire.

Following to the approval of the third session of the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) Sub-Committee on Aquaculture (New Delhi, 2006), and the twenty-seventh session of COFI (Rome, 2007) to establish an interregional mechanism for aquaculture similar to the Coordinating Working Party on Fishery Statistics (CWP-FS), the Workshop was called to address the need for data and information coordination in aquaculture and objectives, characteristics and structure suitable for the Coordinating Working Party for Aquaculture (CWP-AS). After reviewing the data and information requirements in aquaculture and existing gaps in data collection, the necessity to harmonize standards for data, information and statistics, the relations between capture fishery and aquaculture, and structure and activities of CWP-FS, the Workshop reaffirmed the need for a mechanism to identify, establish and harmonize standards for aquaculture data, information and statistics. The Workshop recommended the establishment of the CWP-AS within the framework of the CWP-FS, but with its own terms of reference (TORs), rules of procedure and composition to reflect the specific needs of the aquaculture sector. The Workshop further developed a detailed proposal of functions and structure of such a body including TORs, composition and operational aspects which are attached as Appendix 3.