Contact: Gordon Helm                    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                        10/30/98

Member countries of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, meeting in Rome, concluded their week-long meeting in Rome today with agreed International Plans of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks and for Reducing Incidental Catch of Seabirds in Longline Fisheries.

The plans describe concrete and specific steps to improve the conservation of sharks and seabirds at the national, regional, and global levels, calling for national plans by 2001. Countries are to conduct assessments of sharks and seabird bycatch and, if necessary, develop National Plans of Action.

These international plans of action should establish sound management practices world-wide for the conservation of sharks and reducing incidental bycatch," said chief U.S. negotiator Terry D. Garcia, assistant secretary of Commerce for oceans and atmosphere. "The United States pressed for and achieved plans that feature the inclusion of suggested measures to identify the problem and develop a national plan to resolve it by the year 2001. Further, the use of regional fishery management arrangements is encouraged to ensure the international coordination for addressing these problems," Garcia added.

The meeting agreed to a document entitled "Elements of an International Instrument for the Management of Fishing Capacity." Although the United States had hoped that it could have amended the document to become an international plan of action, participants did agree on the need of all FAO members to (a) regularly assess their levels of harvesting capacity, (b) maintain national records of fishing fleets, (c) develop and implement national capacity management plans, and (d) within the context of these national plans, reduce and progressively eliminate subsidies that contribute to the build-up of fishing capacity. On the international side, it was agreed that FAO will develop a global register of all fishing fleets operating on the high seas and will begin to collect information needed for further analysis of the causes of overcapacity, including open access fisheries, unsustainable fishery management, and subsidies.

"The United States had hoped that agreement would have been possible to move to an international plan of action on managing fishing capacity," Garcia added. "A great deal of progress was achieved, however, on the most complicated and sensitive of the three issues tackled by the meeting. By any measure, the meeting results are a success for us."

The FAO meeting was called to pursue initiatives on sharks, seabird bycatch reduction and the management of fishing capacity. These initiatives arise from the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and are efforts to implement several of its key provisions. The Code is the only international agreement that addresses practically all aspects of fisheries, including marine and freshwater, capture fisheries and aquaculture, and harvesting and shoreside operations.

"Several provisions of the Code are directly applicable to addressing problems in the areas of sharks, seabird bycatch reduction, and managing fishing capacity," said Garcia. "The Rome meeting represents the first concrete and specific steps to implement on a global basis important provisions of the Code."

Although both plans are voluntary in nature, the process of their development is designed to lead to their endorsement by consensus at the FAO Committee on Fisheries meeting in February 1999 and adoption by the FAO Conference in November 1999.