Short-term consultant opportunity to assist with seabird bycatch assessment workshops

 Information on an employment opportunity with BirdLife follows:

“The project “Sustainable Management of Tuna Fisheries and Biodiversity Conservation in the Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ)”, (also known as the Common Oceans Tuna Project) is a critical component of the GEF supported ABNJ Program “ABNJ Global Sustainable Fisheries Management and Biodiversity Conservation in the Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction”.  The program objective is to achieve responsibility, efficiency and sustainability in tuna production and biodiversity conservation in the ABNJ, through the use of sustainable and efficient fisheries management and fishing practices by the stakeholders of the tuna resources; (ii) reducing illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing; and (iii) mitigating adverse impacts of bycatch on biodiversity.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is the implementing agency of the project.  BirdLife International, through its local partner, BirdLife South Africa (BLSA), is implementing the seabird bycatch component of the Common Oceans Tuna Project.

A major objective of the seabird component of the project is to initiate and implement capacity building of national scientists (through a series of workshops) within selected countries to enable them to better manage, analyze and report seabird bycatch data and the effectiveness of mitigation measures used. Collaboratively, the workshops will discuss analytical approaches and ideally develop agreed approaches for analysis.

We are seeking a consultant(s) to assist in the planning of the workshop discussions, working with individual countries and their data, attend and facilitate technical discussions at the planned workshops and develop the analytical approach and standardized statistical tools (e.g. R scripts and Excel sheet macro or similar) for managing and analyzing fishing, Conservation and Management Measures (CMM) use and seabird bycatch data.”

More information can be found here.  The closing date is 31 August 2016.

Longline-hooked Black-browed Albatross, photograph by Graham Robertson

Longline casualty.  Remains of a White-chinned Petrel, photograph by Jessica Kemper

De-hooking a Wandering Albatross, photograph courtesy British Antarctic Survey

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 02 August 2016