Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) are multilateral agreements that govern the extraction of marine resources, mostly in ocean basins. There are five tuna RFMOs, four dealing with multi-species tuna fisheries in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and one dealing with the Southern Bluefin Tuna:

• CCSBT - Convention for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna
• IATTC - Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission
• ICCAT - International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas
• IOTC - Indian Ocean Tuna Commission
• WCPFC - Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission

A sixth major RFMO-type institution is CCAMLR (Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources), manages much more than just fisheries, and is strictly not an RFMO, but BirdLife treats it as such for practical purposes. CCAMLR deals exclusively with Southern Ocean/Antarctic waters.

The longline fishing that all of these 6 RFMOs control accounts for >90% of all longline effort each year. For a full description of the problems with longline fishing and seabirds, see the ATF page. The GSP has long recognized that strengthening the functioning of RFMOs, and ensuring that they have good seabird conservation measures enforced, is the most effective way of ensuring global protection for seabirds from the threats of lethal interactions with fishing gear. Our work takes the data, experimental results and lessons learned from the ATF work and presents these to the IOTC and ICCAT. Ross Wanless is responsible for the GSP's engagement with both these commissions, and contributes to the GSP's work in other RFMOs.