The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) continues to support activities in the Pacific to tackle issues around by-catch and other threats to threatened marine species. In Papua New Guinea (PNG) last week, SPREP facilitated a multistakeholder workshop bringing together for the first time officials from the National Fisheries Agency (NFA), Conservation Environment and Protection Agency (CEPA), Gulf Province and Kikori District to discuss the environmental consequences of the fishmaw fishery.
Community representatives were also flown in from Kikori and Kerema villages to attend the workshop.
Previous funding by the European Union through the Pacific European Union Marine Programme (PEUMP) 2019-2025 to SPREP supported research on by-catch in Kikori to understand the extent of the by-catch issue in the highly lucrative fishmaw fishery. Working with Kikori communities, researchers were able to build a picture of the impact to the dolphins and sharks and other species found in Kikori.
