An important activity planned as part of the SciCOFish project is the improvement and integration of national tuna fisheries databases, which includes conducting regular audits of national systems to ensure data quality is maintained.

A better overview of national fisheries

Bruno Deprez, as the SPC Fisheries Data Audit Officer, visited Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), from 6 to 16 March 2011 to conduct the first in-country data audit on the FSM National Oceanic Resource Management Authority (NORMA) database.

For Bruno, this task focused on improving vessels trips mapping and the coverage and accuracy of fisheries data, and he documented the current strengths and weaknesses of the collection and management of tuna fishery data.

The TUFMAN (Tuna Fisheries Management) software, developed by SPC, has been installed as the national database in 12 countries. It allows those countries to manage the catch and effort data for their own exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and meet their international reporting commitments.

Specifically, the fishing vessels provide national authorities with their logsheets, and data from the logsheets, for example their trip dates, are entered in TUFMAN.

In FSM, the results of the audit will allow NORMA staff in charge of data management to ask the fishery companies for missing logsheets.

Data quality for efficient fisheries management

Audits are a formal, often periodic examination and checking of data or procedures to verify their correctness. They are more commonly associated with the financial sector, but the same benefit can be gained by applying an audit to a national tuna fishery data collection system, a set of procedures used to manage tuna fishery data, or the quality of a database system used to process and store tuna fishery data, for example.

The main benefit of auditing is that it results in more consistent data collection and management systems based on standardised procedures. This ensures that national and regional requirements for data are satisfied and assures the users of the data (e.g. fisheries managers and researchers) that they are dealing with quality, unbiased and representative data.

For more information, please contact Bruno Deprez, SPC Fisheries Data Audit Officer.