Overview of Workshop Objectives. An overview of the impetus for the workshop was provided, which outlined the objectives of the workshop and explained the format for the workshop. The term “best practices” was chosen to be used as opposed to “standards,” as the objective of the workshop was not to impose requirements on observer programs but rather to identify what data collection practices currently work best for data users involved in bycatch reduction research, and to identify specific variables and data collection practices that, if collected by all observer programs, would facilitate global research in bycatch reduction strategies. It was stressed that due to the limited time available for the workshop, the recommendations from this workshop may benefit from further refinements in the future. Several important issues were noted as beyond the scope of the objectives of this workshop, but may be addressed in other venues: • Observer data collections in non-longline fisheries that also have bycatch of protected species (e.g., gillnet and trawl fisheries) • Fishery-independent research needs • Best practices in other fishery-dependent data collection programs (logbooks, VMS, effort collection, etc.) • Recommended bycatch mitigation measures • Data needs in currently unobserved fisheries (although the recommendations identified in the workshop may help to develop a template for data collections in unobserved fisheries).
