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South Africa adopted the final version of  its National Plan of Action for Reducing the Incidental Catch of Seabirds in Longline Fisheries in August 2008, during the Fourth Meeting of ACAP's Advisory Committee, held in South Africa.  Copies were made available to all the attendees.  See a South African press release at:

 http://www.deat.gov.za//NewsMedia/MedStat/2008Aug23/22082008.doc

Production of South Africa's  NPOA-Seabirds was originally funded by a grant from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  The first draft, submitted to the South African Government  in November  2002, and then updated in December 2003 as a 103-page document following a stakeholder workshop and opportunity for comment was researched and written under contract by John Cooper and Peter Ryan of the University of Cape Town.

The 2002 and 2003 versions included a detailed assessment of South African longline fisheries, in line with the FAO's IPOA-Seabirds.  See:

 ftp://ftp.fao.org/FI/DOCUMENT/IPOAS/national/southafrica/SA-NPOA.pdf.

For an abstract of the 2003 text, posted to the FAO web site in 2004 go to:

 http://www.fao.org/fi/oldsite/eims_search/1_dett.asp?calling=simple_s_result&lang=en&pub_id=170042. 

The 2003 version has now been further updated, but has also been much summarized into a 32-page document with the input of Samantha Petersen of WWF-South Africa.   Although its title does not suggest it, the adopted NPOA -Seabirds also considers trawl fisheries.

 For details of the FAO's IPOA-Seabirds and the various national plans adopted so far go to:

 http://www.fao.org/fishery/publications/seabirds/npoa/en

Posted by John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 17 October 2008