20th Regular Session of the Scientific Committee

Effort creep in longline fisheries can lead to overestimating fish stock abundance and underestimating fishing pressure, resulting in inaccurate stock assessments, flawed management decisions, and ineffective conservation measures, ultimately threatening the sustainability of fish stocks. This project's tasks include a literature survey on longline effort creep in WCPO stock assessments, approaches to investigating longline effort creep and quantifying longline effort creep. SC20 will review these research outcomes and advise on the next steps.