Appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture, teacher FangZhou from SHOU and researcher Zhang Heng from East China Sea Fisheries Research Institute attended the ThirdScientific Committee Meeting (SC3) of the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement (SIOFA) heldon the French Island of Reunion from March 20 to 24. Nine contracting partiesof the organization also attended the meeting (no representative was sent by Mauritius, Seychelles or South Korea to themeeting). Also present at the meeting as cooperative non-contracting partieswere representatives of China and three non-governmental organizations (NGOs),that is, the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement (SIOFA), theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) andthe Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC). A total of about 20 representativesattended the meeting.
The meeting was chaired by Doctor IlonaStobutzki, Chairman of the Scientific Committee and senior principal scientistof Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences(ABARES).Discussions were conducted on national report, data submission format,observer program, vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs), Hoplostethus atlanticusresource assessment and future work plans. As a cooperative non-contractingparty, China for the first time submitted a national report about the sea areaunder the jurisdiction of SIOFA, which received close attention from allparties present at the meeting. Fang Zhou took part in the whole process of thecompilation and submission of the national report, introduced the operations ofour country in this sea area, cleared the doubts raised by foreign parties withrational explanations, actively safeguarded the rights and interests of theChinese fishery, and laid a solid foundation for China’s future fisheryactivities in this area.
SIOFA was formally established on March 23,2012. Now it consists of nine contracting parties (i.e., Australia, CookIslands, Japan, South Korea, Seychelles, Mauritius, the EU, France (on behalfof its overseas territory) and Thailand) and four cooperative non-contractingparties (including China). China has some fishery activities in the IndianOcean Region, and pays close attention to the activities of this organization.This meeting helped us further understand the current progress of thisorganization, and offered some decision-making basis for the Chinese Governmentin deciding how to make fishery activity arrangements in this area and whetherto become a formal contracting party of this organization.