Cape Town, South Africa

12-June-2012: Announcement by email from the Chair and IOTC Circular from the Executive Secretary.
Note: In 2011, the Scientific Committee ENCOURAGED data to be used in stock assessments, including CPUE standardisations, be made available not less than three months before each meeting by CPCs.
26-June-2012: Deadline for nominations of an Invited Expert.
04-July-2012: Chair to announce the successful Invited Expert for the meeting.
19-July-2012: 60 days pre-Meeting. Deadline for comments on draft agenda by participants to be provided to the Secretariat.
20-July-2012: Secretariat to circulate the revised draft agenda.
Note: In 2011, the Scientific Committee ENCOURAGED that where possible, data summaries be provided no later than two months prior to each meeting, from the IOTC Secretariat.
03-Aug-2012:  45 days pre-meeting. Deadline for applications to the Meeting Participation Fund in accordance with the Rules of procedure for the administration of the IOTC meeting participation fund.
18-Aug-2012:  30 days pre-meeting. Deadline for participants to notify the Secretariat of papers being submitted for the WPEB08 meeting.
Note: in 2011, the Scientific Committee RECOMMENDED that data to be used in stock assessments, including CPUE standardisations be made available not less than 30 days before each meeting by CPCs.
19-Aug-2012: Secretariat to circulate draft Annotated Agenda.
02-Sept-2012: 15 days pre-meeting. Deadline for meeting papers to be submitted to the Secretariat by participants.
03-Sept-2012: Secretariat to circulate revised draft Annotated Agenda.
17-Sept-2012: Start of WPEB08, Cape Town, South Africa.

The following datasets are available for download. Please let us know if you encounter any problems in accessing the data. These datasets have been submitted to several validation procedures at the Secretariat. However, the procedures might not be exhaustive enough to uncover all potential problems. If you discover any major inconsistency in the data, please let us know as soon as possible. Click here to download a Microsoft word version of the text below.

Data Catalogues (available):
The file CAT_SKH.pdf (>>>>-2012), contains information on the amount of nominal catches by gear type for which data are available for sharks (Catalogues on Data Availability for shark).

Nominal Catches (available):
Total catch estimates for sharks and IOTC species, broken by Fleet, Year, Gear, IOTC Area and species. Note that the catches of IOTC species are presented in aggregated form.
The catches estimated for 1950-2010 and details about the data source and data quality can be found in the spreadsheet:

NCSKH.zip (as of 1-07-2012) (xls file compressed with WinZip)

Catches (in tonnes or/and in number) and effort are recorded per Fleet, Year, Gear, Type of School, Time Interval (month or quarter usually), grid (usually 1 degree square areas for surface gears and 5 degrees square areas for longlines) and species.

Catches and effort are not available for all Nominal catches strata. When recorded, the catches in these datasets might represent the total catches of the species in the year for the fleet and gear concerned or represent simply a sample of those.

Length frequency data Tables (available):
The available data on the sizes of shark species caught by the different fisheries are presented as:

Size frequency data available: The size frequency data available in the IOTC databases is presented in the following xls file (compressed with WinZip):

• FL_SKH.zip (as of 10-07-2012), contains the available data for blue shark (BSH), bigeye thresher shark (BTH), silky shark (FAL), oceanic whitetip shark (OCS), porbeagle (POR), crocodile shark (PSK), and shortfin mako (SMA)

All size data strata not recorded as standard length (fork length for sharks) was converted into standard length by using the equations available for each species. Fish recorded under size class intervals other than those used for billfish species was assigned to the corresponding  size class interval(s) for each species (first class is 15cm for all billfish species and class interval is 3cm).

Equations: The equations used to estimate standard lengths from non-standard measurements and to estimate weight from the available lengths can be found in Equations.doc (will be available shortly)

Details about the type of SF data available can be found in SF_Reference.xls (compressed with WinZip).
For further information: