First Intersessional Workshop for western North Pacific common minke whale Implementation Review

In 2009, the Commission had agreed that the Scientific Committee should follow the option in its report that specified completing a full Implementation Review as soon as possible, ideally by the 2012 meeting. This timeline will be possible only if the pre-Implementation assessment can be completed this year. The Committee was undertaking a pre-Implementation assessment, rather than immediately commencing an Implementation Review, because the 2003 Implementation had been conducted before the existing guidelines for Implementations had been developed and had focussed primarily on O-stock. Committee guidelines for Implementations state that the main focus of a pre-Implementation assessment is: ‘the establishment of plausible stock hypotheses consistent with the data that are inclusive enough that it is deemed unlikely that the collection of new data during the Implementation process will suggest a major novel hypothesis (e.g. a different number of stocks) not already specified in the basic Implementation Simulation Trial structure.’ Additional foci are examination of available abundance estimates and information on the geographical and temporal nature of ‘likely’ whaling operations and future levels of anthropogenic removals other than due to commercial whaling. The importance of creating a document that lists the various datasets and other information available for the pre-implementation assessment was recognised (this is normally provided by national scientists in the case of a new request for a pre-mplementation Assessment). This will be a living document, at least until the deadline is established for the consideration of no new data for the Implementation Review (this occurs at the First Intersessional Workshop although new analyses may be presented at the First Annual Meeting).

The Committee has successfully addressed all of the items required for a pre-Implementation assessment and therefore the pre-Implementation assessment is completed. There is a considerable amount of work that needs to be done to complete the Implementation Review. Specifically, there is a need: (a) to assemble the data so that they can be used when conditioning the operating models on which the Implementation Simulation Trials are based; (b) to specify and code the operating models themselves; and (c) to fit the operating models to the agreed data sets (conditioning). It is infeasible to conduct all of the work in a single meeting (the First Intersessional Meeting). Rather, it the probability of completing the work during the first year of the Implementation Review will be maximised if two meetings occur. The main objective of the first (the Preparatory Meeting) held in Tokyo in September 2010 was to determine the structure (time-steps, sub-areas and population components) of the operating models so that all relevant data can be assembled at the appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions.

The primary objective of the First Intersessional Workshop is to develop the Implementation Simulation Trials structure and to specify the appropriate conditioning so that it can be carried out before the 2011 Annual Meeting. The relevant section of our Requirements and Guidelines are included after the draft agenda.

Steering Group:  Butterworth (Convenor), Allison, An, Baker, de Moor, Donovan, Double, Hammond, Kitakado, Park, Pastene, Punt, Wade, Waples

Venue and timing: Busan, Korea from 14-17 December 2010