Summary
This report to the Seventh Meeting of the Parties has been drafted as a document in progress for the Advisory Committee by the Chair and Vice-chair with the assistance of the Agreement's Secretariat. The final version will be prepared after the conclusion of the Twelfth Meeting of the Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee and its Working Groups made progress during the past quadrennium, despite the problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Agreement continued to provide expert advice to Parties, Range States and several organisations and entities on actions to address threats to albatrosses and petrels, both at sea and on land. A substantial proportion of this information is readily accessible through the ACAP website, including conservation guidelines, best practice advice for bycatch mitigation measures, and mitigation fact sheets, among others. The Agreement took advantage of the availability of funds from the FAO/GEF through the ABNJ project, to produce updates of some of these documents. Now that effective mitigation measures have been identified for the key fishing activities known to result in the incidental catch of ACAP species, the challenge ahead is to have these mitigation measures used in those fisheries where seabird bycatch is occurring. Another key challenge is to obtain the fisheries data required to improve our understanding and management of seabird bycatch. The process of developing an appropriate methodology for the use of this data has continued in the past quadriennium.