SEAFDEC Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center
The representatives from the SEAFDEC Secretariat, namely: Information Program Coordinator, Ms. Nualanong Tongdee; Senior Policy Officer, Ms. Pattaratjit Kaewnuratchadasorn; and Senior Information Officer, Ms. Saivason Klinsukhon attended the 9th Session of FIRMS Technical Working Group Meeting: Supporting FAO SOFIA State of Stocks Index (SoSI) Biennial Updates held on 10–12 December 2024 through online meeting. Hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Meeting was participated by 21 partners of the Fisheries and Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS) including SEAFDEC. The aim of the Meeting was to discuss practical arrangements with partners to support the development and biennial update of SOFIA SoSI, including data workflow and timely data provision, as well as discuss the new FIRMS web dissemination interface.
During the Meeting, SEAFDEC informed the results from the Forty-seventh Meeting of Program Committee concerning the introduction of a new approach to operationalize stock information content for FAO Areas 57 and 71. Moreover, the Meeting took note that FAO has organized a series of capacity-building workshops over the past two years to assist the ASEAN member States (AMSs) in reporting fish stock assessment data. While noting the mechanism of FIRMS designed to seek for SoSI inputs mainly from partners, it was further suggested that FAO should explore other possibilities to obtain the data from countries such as by incorporating the data required for SoSI into the SDG 14.4.1 Questionnaire or through future FAO capacity-building activities for countries. Additionally, SEAFDEC supports medium-term objective of the FAO to collect data from countries for SoSI through reporting on SDG14.4.1 and will continue its collaboration with FAO to build the capacities of the members toward this direction.
