This project (PAM‐2024‐01) will develop a Precautionary Approach Framework (PAF) that will enable
SIOFA to meet the objectives of Articles 2 (Objectives) and 4 (General principles) of the SIOFA
Agreement.
The PAF will be approached in a structured way by first developing a conceptual framework, and
second, developing the operational guidelines used to implement the conceptual framework. The PAF
will ultimately provide a fisheries precautionary approach framework that is designed to help ensure
sustainably managed fisheries within the SIOFA Area.

Recent work on alfonsino otoliths has shown that the techniques used to estimate age from otoliths
have severely underestimated the age of these fish (SC‐09‐29). As such a new ageing technique is
needed. This requires the development of a protocol for ageing, training some ages in this technique
and then testing the technique on a sample set of otoliths.
Key to this process is to get a number of fish agers involved from multiple labs so that all otoliths from
the region can be aged using the same techniques.
Objectives:

The SIOFA Scientific Committee (SC) provides scientific advice to the Meeting of Parties (MoP) on the
status of stocks and sustainable yields of deep‐sea fisheries resources. In 2018, the SIOFA Scientific
Committee (SC3) conducted the first orange roughy stock assessments in the SIOFA region and
provided advice to the Meeting of Parties on the stock status and sustainable yields for orange roughy.
An updated orange roughy stock assessment was conducted and presented to SC7 in 2022.