 and dear colleagues. We would like to thank you for joining us today and we would like to welcome you to FAO in Geneva Fisheries Trade Talk session today, organized in collaboration with FAO's Fisheries and Aquaculture Division. My name is Pinar Karakaya. I am an economist at the FAO liaison office in Geneva and today I will be moderating the session. Before starting the event, let me share some details regarding the logistics and housekeeping. This is an hybrid event where virtual participation is also possible through Zoom platform. This event will be in English only with no interpretation. We will try to have some questions at the end of the session if the time permits. For those who are participating virtually, we would kindly request you to submit your questions in the Q&A module. After the session, we will be sharing the presentations and recording with all participants. That's all for housekeeping issues. Before introducing today's topic, I would also like to thank our WTO colleagues helping us logistically in the organization of this session today here at the WTO. Today's session will provide an opportunity to elaborate further on the issue of stock assessment and sustainability, as well as the challenges associated with the assessment and management of fisheries. This session will also demonstrate existing and emerging FAO knowledge and methods regarding the stock assessments and sustainability, including a regional perspective from Asia. With this background, let me introduce our speakers. Mr. Dominic Pujon, Director of the FAO Liaison Office in Geneva. Mr. Rishi Sharma, Senior Fisher Resources Officer in the Fisheries and Aquaculture Division of FAO in Rome. Mr. Ruaou Nunes, International Relations Officer from the DGMARE of the European Commission. Mr. Ridvan Mulyana, Director for Fish Resource Management in the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries of the Republic of Indonesia. Mr. Hussain Dede, Fisheries Engineer and Senior Officer at the General Directorate for Aquaculture and Fisheries in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Turkey. Mr. Nunes, Mr. Mulyana, and Mr. Dede will join us today virtually. We will also hear from Mr. Simon Pongesmit, Senior Fishery Officer at FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific via video recording. Now I would like to give the floor to Mr. Pujon for opening remarks. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Pina. Excellencies, distinguished delegates and participants, dear colleagues. Firstly, I would like to thank you all for joining our session this afternoon. We appreciate your support and interest in FAO work. As you already know, FAO supports its members effort to formulate policies conducive to improved food security by strengthening evidence and analysis, providing capacity development and facilitating a neutral dialogue away from the negotiating table. As FAO in Geneva last year, we included the topic of fisheries in our trade talks series, which as you might be already aware of, aims to enhance the understanding of the current state of global fisheries and aquaculture. These dialogue series also aim to inform on the existing and emerging FAO knowledge and tools for transforming aquatic food systems and promoting their responsible and sustainable management. Fisheries are critical source of economic prosperity, cultural identity, food security and livelihoods around the globe. Let me touch upon some figures. According to the latest edition of the State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture that was published in 2022, global fisheries and aquaculture production reached a record high level in 2020 with 214 million tons. The amount destined for human consumption was 20.2 kilo per capita, more than double the 1960s of 9.9 kilo per capita. The primary fisheries sector employed an estimated 58.5 million people. It is estimated also that 600 million livelihoods depend on fisheries and aquaculture, including subsistence and secondary sector workers and their families. Moreover, FAO's fisheries and aquaculture outlook through 2030 predicts an increase in output consumption and trade, albeit at a slower rate. Those figures actually show how the sector is critical and will continue to play an increasingly essential role in delivering food and nutrition and meeting the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. SOFIA 2022, on the other hand, also underlines that the fraction of fisheries stocks within biologically sustainable levels decreased from 90% in 1974 to 64.6% in 2019. However, it is also not worthy to mention that 82.5% of the 2019 landings were from biologically sustainable stocks, which represents a 3.8% improvement from 2017. Indeed, this improvement highlights that effective fisheries management has been proven to rebuild stock and increase catches within ecosystem boundaries successfully. Therefore, meeting the 2030 agenda for sustainable development in SDG-14 targets will also depend on the ability to effectively measure the status of global marine fish population and fisheries. Assessment of fish populations, which will require enhanced data and capacity building is essential for directing ocean management agenda and tracking SDG indicators. With this context in mind, I believe today's discussion on fisheries stock assessment and sustainability will assist in further grasping the intricacies of this topic, including the accompanying challenges while highlighting key FAO knowledge and methods in this area. I believe that the timely focus of today's session will also be instrumental in guiding members with their efforts on the WTO agreement on fisheries subsidies adopted in June last year and in the second wave of negotiation ongoing to achieve a comprehensive agreement on fisheries subsidies. With that, I thank you. Thank you Dominic for your opening remarks. Now we will have Mr. Sharma's presentation on fisheries stock assessment and sustainability. Please wish it the glorious years. Thank you, Dominic. Can people hear me? Is it on? Good afternoon, good morning and good evening, wherever you are. I will sharing my screen in a second. The focus of this stock really is on overfishing and how we define it and how that may play into your negotiations as well. This is going to be a very high level sort of overview of this topic and as such, if there are more details or specifics people may want, you could probably contact me later at the end of the talk, I will provide my contact details. So you could contact me by email if you wanted to talk more. A lot of this also stems with the work we do in FAO on our flagship publication, which is the state of world fisheries and aquaculture, which is taken out every two years. And this publication also provides sort of an overview of what's happening globally. And we are also, I will briefly mention this in the talk, we are also in the process of really updating some of the methodology here and providing a much more comprehensive view of what's happening globally. Okay, sorry. So my talk is going to focus on four different aspects. One is going to be on how we define overfishing within and use this in the context of management globally. I will, as I said, I'll mention briefly what is happening globally with overfishing trajectories. And then also talk briefly about how good governance and management ties in with sort of the no overfishing SDG target and leave you with some remaining thoughts at the end of this presentation. So a lot of what we do in fisheries, obviously like recently with the WTO negotiations, there have been ratifications to the treaty. Four countries have signed on to this recently and we are really in the midst of sort of an evolution of how agreements go. I will also talk about that briefly because there's a UN history of fish stocks agreements and the Kobe process and how this may actually come in with the SDG framework and eventually hopefully get to a place where we have sustainable fisheries globally by 2030 or shortly after that. In order to do that, you really have to have some way of measuring performance and measuring a target or where you are trying to get to. So we have whatever indicator you use and this could be stock biomass, it could be a harvest rate, it could be a fishing mortality rate, it could be a targeted CPUE, it could be the size of a fish, the average size of a fish that you're trying to target. All those could be different targets and that's how we track it is we sample some information in a fishery or in a natural system and from that sample, we make inferences of how things are going either with a direct measure or with an indirect measure where we use it in a model and then we see how we are with respect to our target. Are we below it? Are we above it? If we are below it, what are we gonna do? And we try to avoid some catastrophic point. So if you're looking at this in the banking terminology, it's stress testing, you don't want to go below a certain threshold, that's the same sort of idea. We call it a limit in a system and we don't want to go below that. So the way we actually look at this, I'm not gonna get into the details because initially I had a lot of math and things which people told me to take out because people don't want to see that here. So this is the essential idea and what we are trying to do is avoid crashing a system at some point and that's where also sort of the subsidies negotiations come in because you're trying to avoid that system crash per se by not encouraging, I need to use my laptop with PowerPoint. Okay, so we are going into reference points, the target that I just said, we call that a reference point and it's really a measure of stock health from a biological perspective and it also could be a place where fisheries managers, if you're managing a system, wish to either achieve or avoid falling below. So those as a target and there's a limit, those are our reference points and biological reference points often reflect the combination of sort of several components of stock dynamics. I'm not again going to go into the biology but there are lots of processes here biologically which we encapsulate with a mathematical formulation which then gives you this reference point magically and that's this point that we are trying to get to for all stocks in a system. Currently, we are not doing that great globally but the SDG target 1441 is trying to achieve a place where we will be above that target eventually. And we all often look at this as a ratio so we look at it whether whatever measure you're trying to take that's a biological biomass or it's a target on a fish size or it's a catch efficiency in a fleet it's always looked at as a ratio. So if you're above one, it's basically a good thing. If you're below one, it's not a good thing because you're trying to exceed that target. So the ratio should always be greater equal to or greater than it. When you're below it, you need to do something to fix the system. So that's the idea. So they're basically biological reference points are used to provide fisheries managers information regarding the health of the stock, the impacts of fishing on a stock and in doing so, assist in the provision of advice to management from the outputs of stock assessments. They also can be used to evaluate the performance of how are we doing as managers on a system? If you have a target you're trying to achieve, are you achieving it or you're not achieving it? So it's a guidance tool for how well you're managing the system as well. I promise that this is the only slide with some math. There are two different ways we can do this. The one on the left panel here is sort of the approach that we are doing within FAO which uses something called a surplus production model which simplifies a lot of the biology into two parameters. R and K. K is sort of the carrying capacity of the system. R is the intrinsic growth rate of the system. So if you remember your math, this looks like a logistic function with the S shape. It's a sigmoidal shape function. As you achieve K, it flattens out. When you're at the bottom, it's a bottom part of the S. I'm not gonna show that here but it looks like something like this if you follow my cursor. The right side is a lot more complex models that we use in assessments globally in the tuner world and in sort of the developed countries and they're called integrated assessments where we have a lot of parameters. It's a lot of non-linear model fitting but the same idea is achieved there where you have a max based on you, you change the system to different estimates of fishing mortality and you'll get assuming all the other things stay constant. You get a shape of what you're yield which is the amount you can extract from a system looks like. And again, you can see there's a maximum there. That's the MSY, MSY that most people are familiar with and that corresponds with a biological biomass threshold in both cases. So over here you see this is where MSY occurs and that's where the overall biomass in a population might be and this is what the spawning biomass on that population may be. So there are different levels of targets you may want to achieve in a system as well. So the definition of overfishing is quite vague but based on these functions here you can have a sustainable catch at any level on this function but we are trying to achieve MSY. That's the biological maximum you can obtain out of the system and that's the value that we are trying to evaluate overfishing against. So if you are to the right of this curve you're not taking too little but you're not overfishing. If you're to the left of this curve you're taking too little but it's because of excessive fishing pressure. So basically when your biomass is greater than your reference point here then you're fine. If it's less than it, you're not fine. A sustainable catch can exist at many different levels of stock size. That's what I was trying to show you. So on all points on that function you are sustainable. If a stock size decline sustainable catches might still be made. It can be made at very low levels. You can still have a sustainable fishery. So by definition a sustainable catch is not overfishing. Our definition here is where you're below MSY utility then you because of fishing pressure if they're less to the left side of that biomass yield production function in a territory you don't want to be in. So for better or worse one of the most common objectives in fisheries management is to achieve this MSY. A possible working definition of this is the greatest amount of fish you can take out of the water without impairing the ability of the fish left in the water to replace the fish you've taken out. And there've been lots of criticisms of this construct. One is that MSY and BMSY the biomass level that supports this catch are very difficult to estimate. You're working with natural systems. You have a lot in markets and in economics you have data that's very precise. The data in fisheries is not. It's based in a natural system. There's a lot of variation. There's observation errors. There's sampling errors and you're trying to make inferences out from that. So that propagates into your models and then you don't get to see MSY that clearly there might be some biases in the estimates. As BMSY tends to be quite a low proportion of un-fished stock size that's another criticism depending on the production function. Over here, it's symmetric. Often in some of these integrated assessments it's not symmetric and it's left skewed which means that MSY occurs when the population can be quite low as compared to sort of the natural biomass at virgin population sizes. So if you go into a pristine system we call that the natural biomass or virgin pristine biomass. MSY can occur in some cases at 30% of that. So the criticism is that you really are pushing your stocks down too far. If you use a precautionary approach and use a symmetric distribution as the one I showed you, which is what we do in FAO then it's at 50% of that carrying capacity on natural system. So there are many types of overfishing that can occur. I'm not going to go over all this in too much detail for time. But there's something called growth overfishing. This really occurs when your gear is catching too many small fish. It's excessive effort, very large fleet size, the capacity in the region that's something you all will have to deal with with WTO and the subsidies, the capacity. If there's too much and they're catching too many small fish it basically reduces, you want to reduce that overall mortality on that juvenile component because it can impair, you know you're not allowing enough spawners to spawn which can then cause it's called growth overfishing. Recruitment overfishing. It's basically reducing the spawning biomass to the point that your recruitment is impaired. Which means you're not going to get if you got 100 normally out of a population and you forced a population to a level that you only get 20, that may be where your recruitment impaired. I'm just giving you examples for sake. You know, on average you'll be getting 100 but you pushed it down so far down you're not only getting 20 that's a recruitment overfishing sort of construct. An ecosystem overfishing that occurs when the species composition and dominance in a marine ecosystem is significantly modified by fishing. So we take out the large predators, you know the trophy fish and the long-lived species and then you get a very different system which is by the low short-lived species with high resiliency but their trophic levels are a lot lower. Going back to this overfishing point I really want to drive that in here. Again, there are two constructs. This is something which came out of the Kobe process which occurred in 2006, 2007. They looked at a way to represent this graphically. As I said, it's a ratio. So it's a spawning biomass over target spawning biomass on the x-axis and there's a fishing mortality over target fishing mortality on the y-axis. So with respect to the biomass you want to be to the right of it. With respect to the mortality, where do you want to be? You want to be greater than one or less than one? Less than one. So you want to be below and you don't want to be exceeding it. You're fishing too much if you're above it. So really, this is sort of the quadrant you want to be at and this is the quadrant you really want to avoid because you're overfishing and your stock is depressed. Here your biomass is okay but your fishing rate may be too high. And here you take effective action in your fisheries and your biomass may be low but your fishing rate is okay and so you hopefully are rebuilding the population. So natural evolution of a fishery is you come it's a pristine state, there's a lot of fish out there the fishing effort begins, you start overfishing you eventually reach this overfishing trajectory then WTO steps in and introduces their measures overfishing starts recovering and you're supposed to come back here. That's the way it's supposed to work theoretically. Easy. So anyway, that's not the way it works. You all know that but theoretically that's the way it's supposed to work. So now within the reference point, I've given you one which is the MSY reference point but there are many others and often in Australia they use different ones in the US they use F40, F.2.4, F.1, those are proxies for these FMSY targets or biomass reference point targets. So it could also be based on some, basically scalar of that MSY value. Now in FAO, we do this global evaluation of stocks and fisheries. And we don't really worry about this F categorization as they have in the Kobe process, the Tuna RFMOs. What do we do is we look at where's your biomass with respect to MSY. And if it's greater than 1.2, we say that the stock is being underfished. If it's less than 0.8, we say the stock is being overfished. So we have some wiggle room around the one and this is the target area that we say we want to be 0.8 to 1.2. Now, the reasons why they decided to do this because it was basically the uncertainty which we talked about in measuring this. So we said, if you're managing to one per se, that's being too restrictive so we need some uncertainty around that estimate. So let's say if you're between 0.8 and 1.2, you're doing fine if you're below it or not. So that's the rationale. But after that, there's been a couple of papers really emphasizing the pretty good yield concept which suggests that your stock, if it's between 0.8 to 0.2, to 1.1 of what the target MSY value is, you get pretty good yield. You don't get, it's getting 90% of the possible theoretical maximum. So this actually works pretty well with that construct too. I'm not gonna talk too much about this but there's a whole and this sort of is how do we get back into a system which is in a healthy state when you're overfished? There are things called harvest control rules which work with these reference points and that's a whole another area that we could spend probably another half an hour on. But in essence, those reference points that I talked about, they could be quite different. As I said, they could be either BMSY or they could be these scalars with respect to BMSY. The limit though has to be pretty hard, hard bound where you really take some serious actions on a fishery if you want to recover a stock. But you could have a relative fishing mortality which is graduated from something called a threshold to the limit. And you have a target that you're trying to achieve and if your biomass is below a certain level then you start reducing your fishing mortality so that you hopefully achieve a healthy stock in a short amount of time. Now those short periods again, these are things in conventions and RFMO languages which are not very well defined but how this high probability of being in this green zone what does that mean? Well, there were some guidance you could take from the IPCC or from Canada or from Marine Stewardship Council as to what we mean by high probability of being in a certain area. And then short period, what does that mean? Is that two years? Is it 40 years? Well, the USA uses 10 years or one and a half generations. Australia uses 10 years plus one generation. This is generation time of the species you're trying to recover and the MSC uses two generations. Now going back to this concept of uncertainty because we all, I mean, these are not hard fixed targets. There's a lot, as I explained before, there's a lot of uncertainty in what we're trying to do. So how well we observe or measure it is a big piece of driving these uncertainty. There's natural variation in all these processes. There's a response to the fishery itself to these changes in the system. You might be trying to manage it but there may be lag effects in your management and how it actually affects the response. You don't really know what your target is. You have no clear objective. That also causes uncertainty. And then how your management system really responds also causes uncertainty. So I'm not gonna get into that again but I'm just gonna run you within the assessment arena itself that three, this is the same data set we are using. But there are three different profiles of population models that can fit this. One is an extremely resilient one. So you can fish hard. And one is not a very resilient one which you can't fish hard. So depending on what the actual realization of the system is, you could have a very different outcome. This will give you a higher target reference point. This will say you're doing a lot worse than where you are relative to the virgin system. This says you're doing fine. You're about where you were initially. So all these factor into your decision-making, model selection, how you do that is important. So in reality, we are trying to pinpoint one point here but it could be anywhere within this entire range. And there's uncertainty in that point that you're trying to manage to. And what is appropriate management action? Do we reduce fishing effort or do we not? A simple example here, you see like with hurricane systems. This is Katrina which hammered New Orleans in 2005 or six. There was a cone of uncertainty. It could have come anywhere in this area. Unfortunately, it landed right in New Orleans and it destroyed a lot of that. So the effect of a decision should factor in the consequence of what your alternatives are and what if you're wrong on your projection, what kind of effect it has on the system? So here you see, you act as if you think it's here. Your optimistic model is correct. You say, I'm gonna assume it's here and I'm not gonna take any decision and I'm gonna keep fishing the way I'm fishing. If you're right, you're fine. But if you're wrong and it was actually there, you're really going to destroy the stock and probably head towards extinction a lot faster than you thought you were. Now, if you look at this conversely from the opposite angle that you're a fishing industry or a party that really wants to catch and you act as though you were here, then you're right, you definitely reduce effort, you get the stock rebate. What if you were there and you declined your effort? There's a lost opportunity. So you really have to balance these out and how you do it. And again, that construct of an MSC really can help you do that. Reference points, there's a lot of uncertainty in it. The way we operate the targets is a lot of uncertainty in it. But if you operate with a certain set rule specification and you have some target objectives from your fishery such as no variation in your catch, you want a long-term yield of so much, you can achieve those objectives with a high probability without really prescribing to these points right here that you want to achieve. And you'll achieve a system in a good state. And that's really where in fishery science, we really want to go to. But unfortunately, MSY will remain as a construct for a lot longer than we think. It's been there for 50 years and it's going to stay there probably for the next 50. And for good or bad, it actually forces us to really work with something that can be standardized and looked at globally on one measure globally pretty easily. So going back again to the history of development, we have all these RFMOs which came into being over the 50s through the 60s. More recently, we have the Pacific Commission which manages Tuna in 2004. We had the law of the sea convention which took greater part of 30 years to negotiate and it initially started in the 50s. It was ratified around 91, 92. But the big part of it was really, the detail really went 70s and 80s and then it was ratified eventually in 92. MSY, the construct came in 77. It's still there. The UN Fish Stocks Agreement came in 1996. 1995, the precautionary approach to fisheries came in 1996. Kobe process began in the mid-2000s. All the Tuna RFMOs started doing MSCs. Bluefin Tuna is now certified in Atlantic. So it recovered 2011. It was supposed to be going extinct. I mean, there was a big problem with the stock but this whole harvest control rule, an MSC sort of process which began with the Kobe process has really started moving things in the right direction. And now with this new convention, the new articles of this convention that we are looking at, we hope that will also move us into the right direction. So it'll probably be 22, where we had the WTO agreement and then it's ratified in a certain time and then hopefully that also enhances this. We extend it to the right hand here. Going now to another topic that I said globally, how are we doing? This is sort of a time series that we've been reporting on for the last 45 to 50 years. It was started by John Gulland in the 70s. And when we started, there were about 10% of the stocks being overfished. Right now it's about 34%. So though it's tapering off, there's a declining trend but it's sort of gradually tapering off and we hope to see it start to improve but we haven't seen it as yet. Globally, sort of the Mediterranean is one of the worst areas in terms of overfishing. 36.6% of the stocks are sustainably fished. The rest are not. Another poor area is sort of the Western, Western, Eastern Pacific, Southeast and Pacific. Which is also really high. So these two areas are pretty poor. The Southwest Atlantic is also not doing too great. Neither is the North East Atlantic doing that group. So in general, it's all around 30 to 40% globally. Now we are revising a lot of these estimates because the time series that we're using was on a smaller subset of stocks. So now we're increasing our sample size to do that estimate. As you can see, a lot of the landings that come globally are from Asia and we don't have a lot of information on these stocks. So when we do these global trajectories, it's based on population assessments. In Asia, there's very few assessments and so we rely on expert list station methods and other processes to find out what's going here. We are in the process of revising all that. We are really taking a hard look at our data sets. We are consulting with countries. We have one-on-one regional workshops with different parts of the world. And then we revise this entire methodology. We've done this in four areas so far and you can see the trend is basically we are adding more stocks. So the basis of the inference is now becoming a bigger pool set and it's changing. I mean, it's changing by 4% to 5% in each region and it's coming down because basically people are telling us why are you not reporting on these other stocks here which are actually in good shape and we are managing them well. And so when we incorporate information on these other sets, it goes down from 39% to like 33%, 31% to 29 is hardly any change here. But this one area 51 went down from 36 to about 29, 30% here. So it's going down. And we're also gonna be starting on embarking with these infographics which will start displaying also other things, how important it is to a sector. In Asia, obviously it's massive fishery. That's really key to the economy's employment, everything. So Southeast Asia is a completely different animal than North East Atlantic. So you have to take that into account when things are not all in great shape. I mean, maybe 30% overfishing is not so bad given the magnitude of how important it is to the region. So I'm gonna leave with some parting sort of thoughts here. Most countries really deal with mixed stock fisheries and complexes. And what we've looked at so far is a single species construct. And really that changes things. I'll also leave you some thoughts on MSY and maybe there's other ways to manage your fisheries. So here's a snapshot of a study done by CSI around Australia and Beth Fulton is in charge of this project. And it shows you over time, this is a system in the Gulf of Thailand where historically you were fishing down here with a yield curve, those curves I showed you before which says that you should be at an exploitation rate around 25% and your yield target would be 300,000 tons. This is in the 1950 to 1964. Now we are operating under this regime where you're getting a lot higher yield because you have the most resilient species really in this, the less resilient ones have been fished out. And you're getting more in terms of food production, this is probably a better place to be than here. But here you had the more higher trophic value species which were part of the catch which they're normal on here. So you really need to consider that in how you manage. What are your objectives really? You have to have very clear objectives from your fishery. In these multi-species, multi-gear fisheries, you're not going to get an individual MSY. The multi-stock MSY will always be lesser than the sum of an individual MSY. So you're prescribing something here with our agreement which these people are not operating under. So there's a disconnect. Second, not all species can be fished out. I mean, it's impossible because everything has a different production function. So if you actually try to achieve a system state which is optimal, some will be below it and some will be above it. But you would probably penalize a place because half their stocks were below the target which you think they should be at. So, and then the third thing is, if I look at the construct of how things are going with just the species caught here, I'll miss out that the overfishing effects have had on species that were present here so no longer in the catch here. So it has to have a balance of all sort of trophic intervals but your reference points could be maybe different for the different groups. That's something to think about. MSY, there was a Larkin's paper in 77 which talked about MSY, it advocated yields too high, then spell out how to slice the pie and we buried it with the best of wishes especially on behalf of fishes. We don't know yet what will take its place but hope it's good for the human race. So I'll leave you with this thought. MSY is still here, this came out in 1977. It's still using it, using it with little modifications but 50 years on it's still living. It's still part of integral part of all our UN agreements. So it's not all bad within a harvest control rule framework. I think you can use MSY and the uncertainty around it to optimize the system but I'll stop here and open it up to questions. Thank you. Oh, however you want to continue in our, sorry. Okay. And thank you, thank you very much Rishi for this very informative presentation. Actually your presentation put forth a very comprehensive overview of the topic including the definition of overfishing, how fisheries management and assessment work in that context, historical development of the concept of measuring sustainability including the reference points and related challenges and uncertainties and their potential impact on decision-making and management. Now we will move to the panel discussion where we will hear more from our speakers about the regional and national perspectives and experiences in relation to stock assessment and sustainability. First we are going to hear from Mr. Simon Panjimit. His presentation today will provide a regional perspective and focus on the characteristics and diversity of Asian fisheries. Unfortunately we could not have Simon today with us either virtually or in person therefore he will be providing his remarks through a video recording. Shivani Pujo, please share the video recording. Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to make this short panel observation on the characteristics and diversity of Asian marine fisheries and how this influences their management and measurement of their sustainability. The Asian region is home to some of the most diverse marine capture fisheries in the world. We have a large number of species that are caught and almost fully utilized and discarding is unusual in most of the fisheries. This diverse nature of vessels and gears and species challenges the way that we assess these fisheries. And as such we may have to accept that there are poor data estimates for many of them and that we have to be comfortable with only a general idea of the status of most stocks and accept that some fisheries are too small or too diffuse to assess. There's also a huge number of people involved in the fishery and this also means we may not be able to control them to the same type biological limits that science would recommend. The Asian region represents a significant global catch and largest participation in the world. The two major FAO fishing regions which and the Asian countries that fish in them catch 34.2 million tonnes. That's about 38% of the global marine catch total and 64% of the global small scale fishery catch. The Asian region also has enormous small scale fisheries and is the largest employment of fishers with around 24.6 million people in small scale fisheries and 1.16 million in large scale fisheries. And over 97 million all together employed throughout that value. Most commercial fisheries such as the offshore small pelagic fisheries, the narritic tuners, tuner and billfish may be easier to assess and manage using conventional single stock methods. The vessels are larger, persaners, long liners, midwater trawlers, they're commercial so they have access to better data and record keeping and the more targeted fishing means there are fewer species or stocks to assess. So it's easier to apply a single stock assessment method to this type of fishery. However, multi-species, multi-gear and the multi-scale nature of most of the region's coastal fisheries challenges how we think about sustainability and assessment. Single stock models generally only are appropriate to assess and manage those highly targeted industrial and commercial fisheries I've just mentioned but the coastal fisheries of the region are dominated by a mixture of small, medium and large vessels often targeting the same stocks within an area and the huge numbers of species to assess if you use a single species approach is far too expensive and will not really provide an overall management solution anyway. Multi-species assessment approaches are coming up and they're offering the perhaps the best way to go for these kinds of fisheries. It provides an idea of the total multi-species MSY but we can also look at sensitive species and apply some thresholds to them within that. We focus on groups of fish and representative indicator species within the fisheries and using this mixture of reference points not solely MSY allows us to have a more effective and tailored approach. So we use BMSY overall for the mixed species fisheries and then select representative indicator species for groups of alike species and also for ecosystem keystone species. And then using BLIM for particular vulnerable species so that when we are looking at the overall stock we can apply some thresholds to try to ensure that certain vulnerable species are not being severely overfished. We then use these reference points to determine the trajectory of the fishery towards rebuilding or staying within a general overall sustainability envelope. The advantage of this approach is that it can reduce the stock assessment burden by applying it to assessment to fewer species so this is less cost and less time but also it's a simpler kind of message. It facilitates science to management communication. It also allows an estimation of the overall capacity that can be used within a fishery and that capping or reduction of certain gears, segments or vessel segments is possible within that. And it allows us a degree of ability to partition between the small scale fishery and the large scale fishery. However, using these approaches does require us to acknowledge and accept that single species MSY is neither useful nor appropriate to measure the status of many fisheries and that managing using indicator species and assessment of multi species BMSY will have a higher degree of uncertainty. The management measures that will be applied will be broad scale input control measures and that highly reactive management is probably not possible so we need to take longer timelines on the reaction and that rebuilding fisheries in this region that have been highly modified over the past 40 years will not necessarily return to their original state and that a rebuilt stock, mixed stock will still have some vulnerable species that are tending to be overfished but we will try to keep those above a B-limb threshold and resilient species may actually be underfished. And anyway, throughout this whole system some decisions of management will still need to be moderated to take into account socioeconomic decisions particularly relating to the small scale fishery. There are success stories from the region around this approach. There's growing awareness regarding the need for sustainable management and their countries are investing in assessment and management. This is being accompanied by efforts to register vessels, track larger commercial fleets and upgrade policy and legislation. There's also greater awareness for the potential for the use of multi species models to try to unravel the complexity of the region's fisheries. And this has been applied in at least one country's fisheries to date. However, overall in the region there's still a significant human capacity building need on how to undertake these types of assessment and determine appropriate reference points and build these into management. Thank you very much. We would like to thank Simon for his presentation and his remarks. I hope he will be able to watch the recording after this session. His presentation actually highlighted the specifics of the fisheries in the Asian region and various challenges associated with those characteristics. The presentation also provided approaches to address those challenges including the multi species assessment and effort to this end in the region. Now we will hear from Mr. Nunes. Mr. Nunes will provide us with the EU's perspective and experience with regards to the stock assessment and sustainability. The floor is yours. Please. Thank you very much. Thank you to the FAO for this opportunity and for these talks. It is very important because better knowledge of these issues would allow us to have a more informed discussion there in Geneva. So I'll make a short presentation of the EU common fisheries policy. You can move to the next slide please. So the EU fishing fleet is more than 70,000 vessels, three quarters of which are small scale coastal fishing, which means less than 12 meters and with no total gears. Then a quarter, it's what we call large scale, more than 12 meters or less than 12 meters, but with total gears, which fish in EU member states, TZs or nearby and then less than 0.4% the distant water fishing fleet. So if you can move to the next slide, the EU common fisheries policy determines that EU fish stocks are managed at EU level through multi-annual management plans. So those are usually five years. It can be more or less depending on specific situations, but usually five years. Regionalization, this is a bottom-up approach that allows for the lower level authorities and stakeholders to design tailored management on the original scale. And this implies a number of advisory councils at regional level in the EU. And the main method to the main measure, fisheries management will be annual catch limits that are known as a total allowable catch. So in the next slide, you can see in terms of sustainability, the objective, the objective is MSY for all stocks. This has not been achieved, that's the objective, but despite of the progress is in the last few years, but we'll see later how this is done. The actual stock assessment is done by scientific bodies. In particular, I would highlight the role of the International Council for the exploration of the seas, ISIS, focusing more on North Atlantic Baltic Sea, and then the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean dealing with Mediterranean Sea. So those bodies, they calculate fishing mortality rates and then those calculations are compiled and tabulated by the STCF, this committee for fisheries, which is composed by independent experts in the EU. As you see, there's a number of stocks, stocks assessed in both sea basins. We can move on to the next slides in terms of non-EU waters. So there are two types of access agreements, so-called Northern agreements with countries like Norway or Iceland, where either you fleet has access to the waters and vice versa, so this is done mostly on an annual basis. And then the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements, there are a number of those, I think around 13, 14 currently, mostly with the ACP countries and also with Greenland. So this is based on EU fleets through these agreements, having access to the surplus determined by the coastal state concerned. And it implies a number of sectoral support measures also for the coastal states. Then RFMOs, I think the previous presentation went deep in RFMO measures. On top of it, there's the specific regulation on the sustainable management of the external fishing fleet, which is specific for distant water vessels of the EU. So operating in third country waters or on the high seas. Then on next slide, we see how this is done. So there is the data collection framework, which is the basis of work for ICS and GFCM. So each member states has their national work plans and provides the annual implementation reports. Those are evaluated by the Scientific and Economic Committee as well. And then those results are uploaded in the databases, the Joint Research Center databases. So basically the scientific advice coming from ICS for RFMOs is based on this data collection framework, which in the beginning is done based on things like fishing trips and the research vessels. Then on the status of the stocks for this, there is analysis of different factors, trends in fishing pressure, biomass, and a number of specific actions. I'll go in specific examples, but there are many cases of, as mentioned earlier, of a stock that was being subject to overfishing, then the measures enter into force. And then for the recovery of the stock in a determined period of time. And here enters also what is the co-management between at EU level and at member state level. I'll move on to the next slide. One important feature in EU management is the notion of balance between fishing capacity and fishing opportunities. So these member states have to report annually on each fleet segment. A fleet segment is a group of vessels of a determined length class. It can be, for example, from six to 12 meters, which is operating in a defined area and using the same principle gear type. And for this, we use various biological and economic indicators. For example, stocks at risk is when shows whether a segment is catching significant quantities of stocks that are at high biological risk. Then if this is more than 10%, then this indicator turns red. So there's a cause for concern. Then if overcapacity is detected in this specific segment, then a member state must implement an action plan. On top of it, then there are a total capacity ceilings per member state. So on the next slide, we see as previous speakers have pointed out, it can happen, then you don't have enough data. You cannot make your MSI assessment. You don't have enough reference points. And also, as mentioned, the previous presentation, a very important notion is the precautionary approach, which means that the absence of adequate scientific information should not justify postponing or failing to take management measures. So this should always be applied in the absence of enough data. And then when this happens, there are various types of input controls. You can have closed areas, closed seasons. You can have restrictions in term of year or a minimal landing size regulations. Then on the, still on management, after defining total level catch, you member states have to define the quota allocation. This is often done through negotiation between member states. One important feature is the landing obligation. So since 2009, there's this obligation of lands, all fish caught at sea. So the prohibition of these cards. Then as mentioned, very important, the advisory council recommendations, advisory councils, they gather all stakeholders, scientific, economic, NGOs. So the actors on the ground who have more in-depth knowledge and those are fundamental for the decision-making. And finally, there's control and enforcement measures. This can be, there are different types. The more traditional ways inspections at sea, inspections of landing, data analysis, aerial surveillance, but also more modern means with the remote electronic monitoring tools and sensor data. So in a nutshell, the EU system is complex. There are many checks and balances, many bodies involved, but this is all, you believe, necessary in such an environment to have the best possible management to ensure sustainability of the stocks. So thank you very much and I'll be available for questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Nunes, for your presentation. You highlighted the specifics of EU common fisheries policy. In particular, the EU's efforts and methods concerning the measurement and sustainability and management of fisheries. So we would like to thank you very much. Now I would like to give the floor to Mr. Muliana. Mr. Muliana, could you please share with us Indonesia's perspective and experience on the topic? Please, the floor is yours. Hello, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, we can see you. Thank you. Good night, good afternoon, distinguished participants. Thank you for the opportunity to present Indonesia Fisheries Management, including the fisheries stock assessment. Thank you for Mr. Isi, giving us the deep explanation about the MSY and also the state of the fishery. Here I'm with Tim from Indonesia, the persons who close related to our topic now, including we have Professor Indra Jaya from Fisheries Expert and Chair of National Commission of Fish Stock Assessment. And also we have Mr. Nilan Toperbovo, the Senior Officer in Ministry of Marine and Fisheries of Indonesia and Fisheries Subsidies Specialists. Next slide, please. Firstly, I want to show you that the profile of Indonesian marine and fisheries in the ocean world is about 5.8 million kilometers square consists of active legic territorial waters and also an exclusive economic zone. The Indonesian archipelagic is between two oceans, Pacific and India, also between two continents, Asia and Australia. Here is our fisheries and marine profile with 17,000 more islands and 95,000 more coastlines. We have big biodiversity, consists of species of fish, coral reefs and also mangroves. We realize that conservation area, including mangroves and coral reefs are important, so we promote to increasing the coverage of marine protected area or MPA to 32.5 million hectares in 2030. The MPA are important, as we know, as nursery and spawning ground for fish, so it's very important for recruitment ability to increasing the fish stones. Also, we have very dominant small scale and artisanal fisheries. We have more than 80 percent. The vessels are below five growth stones. About the small scale and artisanal fisheries, the contribution is very big. 80 percent live in coastal area. 2.3 million people as artisanal fisheries producing 4.8 million tons of auto-targets. About the fisheries, we also have calculating the MSY for last year in 2022. We have 12.01 million tons of fish and the number of TIC is 8.64 million. So the number of production in 2022 is about 7.49 million tons. Next slide, please. Besides also tell about the marine and fisheries role in Indonesia, three in three areas for source of livelihood and life for coastal communities and also to contributing to GDP and for environmental support. I think it's very important in our country, marine and fisheries roles in Indonesia. We have 7.5 million people depend on Indonesia's marine resources as fishermen also as aquaculture farmers. And about the national fish consumption is approximately 55.37 kilograms per capita per year. And about the income, I think it is still low in Indonesia to develop to increase the level of income. For now it is still 275 per month US dollar. Also about the contributing to GDP, it is including sewage, algae. We have fisheries production, 24.48 million tons giving the export value of US $72 billion. Main commodities are tuna, shrimps and seaweed. The fisheries GDP is 2.77% of national GDP in 2021 years. In environmental support, we have 28,000 kilometers square coral reefs and what estimates of annual coral reef base tourism value is approximately 3.1 billion approximately data from UNEP 2018. Next slide please. Now we go to MSY in Indonesia. This figure showed that the history of MSY office resources in Indonesia, the calculation of MSY has conducted nine times, at least from starting from 1977 and last year to 2022. We can see that the level of MSY is quite dynamic depending on the methodology and also our fisheries policy. For example, in 2014, we closed the fishing vessel from the foraging fishing vessel that operated in Indonesia. The impact in MSY in 2017, the MSY value is raised. We have also the TAC, of course, the TAC number. It is for pre-gasonary reports, 80% from MSY value and depend on the stock health condition. If we look at the marine fisheries production totally in the national, we have a number from 2015 to 2021. This figure showed that our marine fisheries production is still under the TAC. Of course, in total, this condition is good underfishing or moderate, but we know that in particular species and in particular fisheries management area has accurate overfishing. We have nine groups of fish species per FMA, including large pelagic group, small pelagic group, demersal fish, coral fish, squid, shrimp, lobster, blue swimming crab and crab. Next slide. This is the methods for calculating stocks of fish resources in Indonesia. We have raw data, the dataset, including data cache and effort. We are gathering from capture fisheries statistical data. Also, we have biomass and distribution data. The fishery hydroacoustic research data and 11 fisheries management area. Also, we do population parameter biological data analysis, the data from research and on stocks of fish resources by the resources agency. About the methodology and analysis, we conducted the analysis of cats and effort with equilibrium BDM from SEPA, also non-equilibrium BDM and stochastic non-equilibrium. About the analysis of hydroacoustic, we have estimator regressia, progressia at all. The output is, of course, the MSU and TSHPLEU. We have nine groups of fish species per FMA. Also, we have the number of total allowable cats TIC per group of fish species per FMA and also the level of utilization of fish resources per group of fish species per FMA. The calculation conducted by National Commission on Fish Stock Assessment or Komna Skajiskan, which consists of academics, researchers, representatives of fisheries experts and representatives of fisheries association to be able to work independently. Next slide, please. We have framework fisheries management based on spatial and based on counsel to make better management of fisheries. For the condition characterized by FMA, multi-species, multi-gears, multi-habitat and multi-stakeholders, we have these resources and we should take the government matters to build the fisheries management plan or if MP, if MP is prepared from the aspiration of all stakeholders according to their respective roles. We have MP fisheries management plan in 11 FMA and also we have MP for eight species including five MP issues and three still drafting. We have fisheries management council to conduct the management. It is a forum for condition and strengthening synergy of stakeholders in accordance with their authority. The output is policy recommendation based on sustainable fish resource management and to get the optimized fisheries management. Next slide. We develop also fishing logbook data to support data monitoring. For now, we have 7,070% implementing fishing logbook. So, we know about the tracking and coverage of fishing vessel, also the value of cuts per unit effort or productivity per fishing vessel and per fishing management area. Next slide. In international regional, we also active in doing management in fisheries. The Indonesia membership in RFMOs, we are a member in both RFMO, the IOTC, the WCPFC, CCSBT and the IATTC. The profile about our membership in RFMOs we can see in the next slide, please. It's the Indonesian compliance level on RFMOs in IOTC. We can see that the compliance value is good, compliant, rising year by year. Also in CCSBT, the Indonesia compliance status is 80% in 2020. It is because we have implemented an electronic CDS application system. In WCPFC, the compliance status is 87.1% in 2021. Indonesia has fulfilled the set of the 31 CMMS that applied to the WCPFs. Next slide, please. We do also monitoring and surveillance platform. We have a center for monitoring to monitor some indicators, the maritime, marine and fisheries aspect. Also we have integrated marine and fisheries data collection information system including vessel monitoring system, the fishing log book, the observer on board. Also many aspects including aquaculture, conservation areas and etc. Or monitoring fish resources management and IU fishing. We call it an excenter. Next slide, please. Now what is the challenges for Indonesia in calculating MSY? There are four. Firstly, the large area of Indonesian waters with particular characteristic of fisheries resources multi-spaces and multi-gears. So it requires more time and effort to calculate the MSY. Second, the dominance of small scale fishermen in Indonesia fisheries requires more efforts to collect the catch data. The establishment of fisher groups or institution can significantly contribute for data collection. For example, in fishing log book program. Number three, the facilities and infrastructure as well as human resources to support data collection at fishing ports are inadequate related to number one. And the last one, the cost required in the process of collecting data and calculating MSY are large. So these challenges for Indonesia in calculating MSY. Next slide, please. The conclusion. Firstly, stop assessment activities have been carried out for the past 20 years to ensure Indonesian fisheries sustainability. The challenge of improving the data quality has been strengthened over time. And second, Indonesia has established an independent national commission on fish stop assessment or Komnaskajiskan which consists of various stakeholders including the academicians, researchers and fisheries association to oversee stop assessment. Number three, Indonesia has been implemented MCS system including fishing monitoring system, fisheries surveillance vessel, fishing log book, observer onboard and for sampling. Thank you. We would like to thank you very much Mr. Muliano for your points. In your presentation you highlighted the importance of the sector for Indonesia. And also you shared your own experiences with regard to the calculation of stocks and management considering the specifics nature of the fisheries in Indonesia. So we would like to thank you very much. Now we would like to move to our last speaker today, Mr. Dede. Mr. Dede will share with us Turkey's experiences and perspectives with regard to the topic. Please the same way, the floor is yours. Thank you, Pinar. Good afternoon and good evening. Good morning all members. I will try to explain Turkey's share its stock assessment studies, practice, approach and sustainability. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Are you going to share your own screen or do you want us to assist you in sharing your screen and presentation? I already... It's okay now? Yes, it's okay. Okay. Turkey is surrounded by seas on three sides and has a surface area 26 million hectares and has one easy easy in the Black Sea. There are 550 species in our resources. 380 species in inland waters. Commercially, 100 species in the Black Sea are in the Black Sea. So we would like to thank commercially 100 species is fished. There are 15,291 fishing vessels in the sea. 90% of fishing vessels under 12 meters in Turkish fishing fleet. Generally, fishermen are fishing in our own territorial waters and EZ. Also, we have fishing vessels that fishing in the international waters out of fishing season. The ministry has stopped issuing fishing licenses for new fishing vessels in 2001. On the other hand, 1264 fishing vessels were bought from owners who wants to give up fishing activity. This action was applied under the Bayback Program and removed from the fleet by the ministry. This fisheries production with world production has 0.4% percentage. Aquaculture production has been increased continuously over the years. However, the amount obtained from the seas through the fishing tanks to decrease continuously. This due to decision taken by the government for the sustainable use of resources. Year 2000 production has increased the amount estimated. In this slide figures for 2001 shows that declining is continued. Another reason for decrease is that anchovy has a large share in our country's marine fisheries. Although the minimum length of anchovy is 9 cm, but we think to do to climate change or environmental reasons, weakness in the fish weight can lead last 2 years. And fishing season an extra 1 year was imposed for the anchovy. As can be seen this slide, anchovy has a significant share in Turkey's marine catch. Fisheries law is the basis of fisheries management. Regulation, communics and instruction are made accordingly. In these regulations practice in principle of protection, resources, continuation of biodiverse and sustainability are the main target. During the stock assessment the decision maker, minister tries to take into account all factors. Like a climate change, urbanization, environment change, fishing activities, invasive and oriental alliance species, other activities like a transport pipeline, etc. There are 4 fisheries research institute 2 agriculture research institute as a department in the ministry. In addition stock determinate in addition joint stock determinations monitoring studies carried out with the fisheries universities, fisheries research units of the universities and scientific research council of Turkey. Minister have 2 research vessel. General directorate for agriculture and research and policy conducting research activities in accordance with the demand of the general directorate for fisheries and aquaculture. Nowadays around 52 research projects are continuous. In addition stock assessment genetic improvement of selectivity of fishing nets studies also carried out. In this stock studies various parameters of the aquatic environment, stroke amount and composition are evaluated by using different methods. For example on the top with NASA's oceanographic data like temperature, salinity monitoring and comparing with the movement of the stock and species getting information from the fishing vessel in the field of fishing areas left side, right side sorry. On the other hand Bantic structure of the sea monitored at the designated stations. Also monitoring is conducting in terms of pollutants from the determinations and determinate sampling points and these studies carried out according to 5 years program. The next monitoring program performed up to 20 years. Sorry. Acoustic methods are also used in stock determination studies in the sea. Same baby, cannot see your slides. I think you are seeing. Yes, everything is fine. Sorry. I need to. Yes. Acoustic methods are also used in stock determination studies in the sea. This slide demonstrates target and Hadox identification assessment. This in this evaluation parameters such as length, weight reproduction are taken into account. In the Mediterranean Mediterranean Sea one of the important resources for our country and other countries monitoring of demersal fishes in the sea is carried out not only with national organizations but also with RFMOs such as GFCA. Similarly, monitoring studies of demersals in stock are carried out in the Black Sea. In these studies remopes and bioindex model which are also requested by the GFCM are used since dance studies carried out in our country. Results are quite good. Training or joint studies are given to researchers from other countries in our country with collaboration with GFCM. At the same time water parameters are monitored at different seasonal times. Within the framework of the project carried out biological data collected in the Asian and Mediterranean seas. Monitoring studies are carried out for tuna breeding areas and movement also. In our country, negative developments may occur from time to time due to climate change or environmental effect. For example, the Mr. Lejeven seen the sea of Marmara affected not only fish sherry but also individual in the stocks. New approach have been put forward for the Marmara Sea. Close another problem occurs in Turkey. This is not only negatively affected fishing of our fishermen but also can cause damage to fishing vessel. In our country, a quota system is applied for 8 species within the framework of international rules, RFMocotas which are members and national measures. In our country, quota tracking is followed through the fishery information system. The data regarding the fishing are checked by the staff, our provincial directorate and on the landing declaration and after verification a catch certificate is issued. When the quota tracking system is reached to 75% limit, as you see on the slide, the conditions in the system during morning and system turns red when it reaches 90%. Then general directorate fishery makes the estimation how many days need to for quota will be full when it's over, systems automatically stops issuing the catch certificate. Fishery inspection and control done by the marine inland waters were landing points, fishing vessel, fish markets, retail points, cold storage warehouse and road. In this control and audits, the document prohibited species length, time, fishing, gear and validity of licenses permit and records are examined. Control inspection carried out by the ministry central local inspectors, coast guard, gender and policy policies. Penalties such as product confiscation of fishing tools and equipment finds and suspension of cancellation license are applied according to contrary situation detected during the inspection. There are 380 costal structure for different size that fishing vessel benefits from. The ministry determines the landing points for different fishing activity. All kinds of information of fisheries are collected. Fisheries information system. Necessary information is shared with organizations such as Turkish Statistical Institute FAO, GFCM and ICAT. Fishery information system includes registration system for fisheries, geographic information of aquaculture areas, licensing issues, monitoring of fishing vessel, ICAT activities and cyclists. Fishing vessel over 12 meters are monitored with the VMS system and necessary legal sanction imposed on those who do not comply with prohibition. Sustainability based on resource management approach is applied to our resources. Our ministry which does not only deal with fishing operation also produced 14 species with the species found in our sources. We also did seven production stations and released them to nature. Our goal this year to release 100 million fish to marine and inland waters resources. On the other hand, in the years 45 square meters of nets have been collected with the project removing lost and abandoned nets in the seas. Artificial reef are created and monitored in this area determined with the framework of project identify areas suitable for the protection of fish and other living organisms. There is a good progress in this area. Another important activity identification of protected areas and protected species. There are 87 protected areas and 59 protected species in our country. The rules on fish is made by the general directorate fisheries and aquaculture in line with the recommendation of the official advisory board and Fisheries Scientific Committee and then made as a decree determining commercial and sport fishing. It's published in the official journal. In the decree taking account the result of during the decision taken account result of stock studies of economic status quotas and its applications past fishing data and decree covers fishing place, fishing times fish size, species fishing gear, prohibited matters. These work and committees include relevant fishermen organization, non-governmental organization, universities and ministry units. The sustainability of stock is important in the fishery management. One of the problems experienced in this regard existence of more than one fishery in the same area which cause problem between the parties. Other problems experienced in the accuracy of collection of information received from fishermen climate change alien and advanced species incomplete and insufficient historical data changes in fishing migration routes, breeding area cause negative effect in stock management. Thank you. Thank you very much the same way for the presentation for your remarks and for sharing with us Turkey's experience on stock assessment and sustainability. We have had very informative and comprehensive presentations today. We would like to express our gratitude to all the speakers who dedicated their valuable time to be with us today. Unfortunately, we are running out of time so we need to close the session soon. But for those who are interested in the topic more and who have comments can reach out to us in Geneva and we will be connecting them with our colleagues in Rome and in technical experts in Rome. Before concluding let me briefly wrap up. Today we have heard about the importance of stock assessment. We also heard about existing and emerging effort on knowledge and tools regarding stock assessment and sustainability as well as the regional and national experiences from our speakers. While the presentations all highlighted that various actions and activities are being taken at different levels and scales on this complex issue there still exist various challenges associated with the assessment and management of the fisheries. We would like to thank you all to be who are with us today and who joined the session virtually. We would like to wish you a very nice day ahead. Thank you so much.