The Working Group on Incidental Mortality Associated with Fishing (WG-IMAF) agreed in its 2022 meeting that additional data on sex and total body length for incidental seal mortalities be recorded by CCAMLR Scheme of International Scientific Observation (SISO). The objective is to determine if incidental seal mortalities in CCAMLR fisheries have adverse effects on particular sex or maturity cohorts in the populations (WG-IMAF-2022, paragraph 4.22).
This paper updates the pinniped ID guide submitted in the paper WG-IMAF-2023/08 with additional information that would help SISO in achieving its goals. The guide here presented responds to the comments received during the WG-IMAF-2023, paragraph 3.11-3.15, and provides additional information to scientific observers for pinniped identification and data collection.
This ID guide provides essential information to identify the most common pinnipeds in CCAMLR area. It also provides standard protocols for measuring recovered animal carcasses on board of fishing vessels and collecting basic biological data of the bycaught species.
Here, we present several recommendations to do this work efficiently. We also propose next steps on the pinnipeds data collection in the Convention area.