Draft data collection form for whale incidental mortality events in the krill trawl fishery

During its 2022 meeting, WG-IMAF noted the need to develop a data collection template and accompanying instructions for krill trawling vessels to report standardised data in the event of a whale mortality event. Independent of WG-IMAF discussions, the US Marine Mammal Commission generously provided to IWC-SC a potential data collection form for recording information on whale entanglements/entrapments; minor edits where then made during the 2023 meeting of the IWC-SC. The draft data collection form is provided to the Krill Observer Workshop to support any potential discussions around priorities for krill observers, and observer workload and safety. If time allows for discussion, any comment from the Krill Observer Workshop would be valuable in terms of refining the data collection form prior to the WG-IMAF’s 2023 meeting.