A/RES/67/79
Sustainable fisheries, including through the 1995 Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions
of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation
and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, and related instruments
and Trends of Capture Fisheries of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations as a framework for the improvement and understanding of fishery
status and trends;
10. Calls upon all States, directly or through regional fisheries management
organizations and arrangements, to apply stock-specific precautionary reference
points, as described in annex II to the Agreement and in the Code, to ensure that
populations of harvested stocks and, where necessary, associated or dependent
species, are maintained at or restored to sustainable levels, and to use these
reference points for triggering conservation and management action;
11. Encourages States to apply the precautionary approach and ecosystem
approaches in adopting and implementing conservation and management measures
addressing, inter alia, by-catch, pollution and overfishing, and protecting habitats of
specific concern, taking into account existing guidelines developed by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations;
12. Also encourages States to enhance or develop observer programmes,
individually or through regional fisheries management organizations or arrangements,
in order to improve data collection on, inter alia, target and by-catch species, which
could also assist monitoring, control and surveillance tools, and to take into account
standards, forms of cooperation and other existing structures for such programmes
as described in article 25 of the Agreement and article 5 of the Code;
13. Calls upon States and regional fisheries management organizations and
arrangements to collect and, where appropriate, report to the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations required catch and effort data, and fisheryrelated information, in a complete, accurate and timely way, including for straddling
fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks within and beyond areas under national
jurisdiction, discrete high seas fish stocks, and by-catch and discards; and, where
they do not exist, to establish processes to strengthen data collection and reporting
by members of regional fisheries management organizations and arrangements,
including through regular reviews of member compliance with such obligations,
and, when such obligations are not met, require the member concerned to rectify the
problem, including through the preparation of plans of action with timelines;
14. Invites States and regional fisheries management organizations and
arrangements to cooperate with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations in the implementation and further development of the Fisheries Resources
Monitoring System initiative;
15. Reaffirms paragraph 10 of resolution 61/105 of 8 December 2006, and
calls upon States, including through regional fisheries management organizations or
arrangements, to urgently adopt and implement measures to fully implement the
International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks for
directed and non-directed shark fisheries, based on the best available scientific
information, through, inter alia, limits on catch or fishing effort, by requiring that
vessels flying their flag collect and regularly report data on shark catches, including
species-specific data, discards and landings, undertaking, including through
international cooperation, comprehensive stock assessments of sharks, reducing
shark by-catch and by-catch mortality and, where scientific information is uncertain
or inadequate, not increasing fishing effort in directed shark fisheries until measures
have been established to ensure the long-term conservation, management and
sustainable use of shark stocks and to prevent further declines of vulnerable or
threatened shark stocks;
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