Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization

The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) is an intergovernmental organization with a mandate to provide scientific advice and management of fisheries in the northwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean. NAFO is headquartered in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.

NAFO's overall objective is to contribute through consultation and cooperation to the optimum utilization, rational management and conservation of the fishery resources of the Convention Area.

The NAFO Convention on Future Multilateral Cooperation in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries applies to most fishery resources of the Northwest Atlantic except salmon, tunas/marlins, whales, and sedentary species (e.g. shellfish).

In 2007 NAFO adopted an Amended Convention. The Convention must be ratified by 3/4 of the Members to come into effect. The original objective was modernized to include an ecosystem approach to fisheries management. It now expands beyond a sustainable use of the commercial northwest Atlantic fishery resources by committing to also protect the associated marine ecosystems from adverse fisheries effects.

In 1950, the fishing nations who operated fleets on the continental shelf of Canada and the United States began to recognize that fishing resources were finite and sought to establish an international multinational organization to provide for cooperation in preserving fish stocks. This organization, the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, or ICNAF, was organized that year and mandated to use modern scientific methods in providing advice to member nations.

The ICNAF was supported by the "International Convention for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries", however between 1973-1982 the United Nations and its member states negotiated the "Third Convention of the Law of the Sea" - one component of which, the concept of nations being allowed to declare an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), was ratified and implemented in 1977. This extension of national fisheries jurisdiction over large areas of the continental shelf in this region by Canada, the United States, Greenland and St. Pierre and Miquelon required that the ICNAF be replaced with a new convention.

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