FIA PNG participates in the Fishing Vessel Observation Network (FVON) Workshop hosted by SPC in Noumea, New Caledonia, 16-20 March, 2026.
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In the course of last week, our Sustainability & MSC Coordinator was in Noumea to participate in the SPC’s FVON initiative to acquire supplementary data to enhance oceanographic modelling and improving understanding of environmental conditions that influenced the distribution of fish, ecosystem components including tuna prey species and to improve the understanding of climate induced impacts on marine ecosystems, support and validate stock assessments to improve weather modelling.
This follows from the last 12 months' collaboration with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) under the program supported by the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), SPC has been participating in a global initiative engaged commercial fishing vessels as Ships of Opportunity (SOOPs) to collect oceanic environmental variable data, with the initial focus on subsurface temperature. Participation in this program was voluntary, at no additional cost to the vessel operators in the WCPO region, and provided significant benefits to ocean, fisheries, and meteorological science. It also provided fishers with close-to-real-time information relevant to their fishing operations. FIA PNG volunteered in this program by installing six (6) of the environmental monitoring devices in six of its fishing company fleets last year to monitor temperature depth profiles of the purse seine fishing gear type.
The purpose of the workshop was to bring together representatives from the commercial tuna industry from SPC member countries, regional and international ocean scientists working in oceanography, meteorology, and fisheries, representatives from national fisheries administrations in SPC members, and SPC specialist staff to review the current status of FVON in the Pacific Islands region and discuss possibilities for future development of the Network. The discussion will inform SPC decisions relating to future work, as well as consider SPC’s endeavors to coordinate an integrated ocean monitoring facility for the region, and also focus on:
Accessing the Copernicus Marine Service oceanography product dashboard (user-defined spatial and temporal extractions and visualizations of Copernicus products). Evaluation of the skill of eSPA ocean forecasting products
(https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025MS005128) and the drafting of the Copernicus Ocean State Report to facilitate production of annual tuna-climate indicators by Copernicus marine services for tRFMO reporting. The final candidate indicators for the 2026 WCPFC climate and climate change report card were also evaluated during the workshop.
For us, the fishing industries in the Western Pacific, representatives from fishing industries across Samoa, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea, all agree that the workshop supported in making sound decisions to improve operational efficiency, with more confidence in using these environmental data and information. The temperatures/depth profiles also influenced fishing operations. For example, the usage of the tool helped to make accurate decisions on where to go and catch fish, and mainly towards the maintenance of our MSC tuna fishery standard of sustainable fisheries, especially the Principles 1 and 2 components, about the health of the
tuna stock and the impacts to the environment caused by climate change indicators on tuna species biomass movement and stock assessments against the different gear types used in fishing operations.
The workshop ended with a few recommendations brought forward by fishery administrations/ministries and industry needs in such initiatives provided by SPC and other partners in the oceanography and fisheries management space.
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