21st Regular Session of the Scientific Committee

Effort creep in longline fisheries can lead to overestimating stock abundance and underestimating fishing pressure, resulting in inaccurate assessments, flawed management decisions, and ineffective conservation measures. Project 122 (Scoping study on longline effort creep in the WCPO) intended to review existing research on effort creep, particularly in longline and other relevant fisheries, to summarize investigative methods, assess the relevance of published scenarios to WCPO longline fleets, and evaluate how effort creep has been incorporated into stock assessment models. SC20 recommended a no-cost extension of this work to Project 122a (Extending the scoping study on longline effort creep in the WCPO to enable cross tuna RFMO collaboration and broader discussion on CPUE abundance index development) to continue this work (para 372, SC20 Summary Report). To this end, the project will engage with DWFNs and the industry on effort creep and technology trends, initiate collaboration with tRFMOs on joint CPUE analysis planning, and explore funding opportunities to support inter-tRFMO efforts.