The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) have signed a Letter of Agreement (LoA) to strengthen the use of available data and improve assessments of deep-sea fish stocks in ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ).
The collaboration is designed to address the lack of biological information on populations of target species fished hundreds of metres below the water's surface.
Managed by the FAO-led Common Oceans Deep Sea Fisheries project, the work will draw on the expertise of ICES and the regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs).
“Assessing the status of fish stocks normally requires data such as the quantity of fish caught each year, their sizes and ages" said Marcello Vasconcellos, Lead Technical Officer with FAO's Fisheries Division.
“But for many of these stocks that information is simply not there. This collaboration will unite the best brains to explore and trial methodologies so we can assess the target deep-sea fish stocks even if the biological data is incomplete."
Commercial deep-sea fisheries often target species that can only sustain low rates of exploitation because they reproduce slowly, making them vulnerable if not managed appropriately. Data-limited assessment methods for these species and fisheries should enhance our understanding of their sustainable exploitation rates and biological status.
Bringing data-limited tools to the fore should improve our knowledge of their status and support sustainable management actions. FAO's 2025 Review of the state of the world's marine fisheries resources found that for one-third of deep-sea stocks, there is still insufficient information to know if they are abundant, stable, or declining; emphasizing the importance and urgency of this new collaboration.
Leading the way
ICES is a world leader in developing and applying methods that aid decision-makers in meeting fisheries management and biodiversity policy objectives. There is an ever-growing suite of methods and tools available for assessing data-limited stocks, and much of this work has been pioneered by ICES through our WKLIFE workshop series.
“This exciting new challenge allows ICES and FAO to work together in advancing our joint understanding of life-history, biology, and assessment of our rarer deep-sea species" says Carl O'Brien, ICES President and former chair of WKLIFE, “With ICES background in strategic partnerships in the Atlantic Ocean and beyond, our well-established expert community working on the development of data-limited methods will now extend their expertise into ABNJ. Working jointly with FAO, ICES anticipate building on our recent successes of more than a decade in developing data-limited methods and addressing the new emerging challenges."
Letter of Agreement
The work under the FAO/ICES agreement will focus on fisheries that target species such as orange roughy and alfonsino living on or around volcanic mountains deep below the ocean. It will also look at methodologies to assess stocks of high-value species caught with hooked longlines, such as toothfish and sablefish.
Working with stock assessment biologists from different ocean regions, the project will study the current challenges for data-limited deep-sea fisheries stocks. The experts will then review, develop, and trial new assessment methodologies, and build an open-access online tool to then share these tools with a wider audience of users.
ICES is a partner in the FAO's Common Oceans Deep-Sea Fisheries program.
