Proposal to Amend CMM-2024-03 on Transshipments

The NPFC has made progress on increasing monitoring and oversight of transshipment activities through the new, strengthened transshipment measure that was adopted at the 2023 Commission meeting. The measure requires NPFC vessels to provide notice of transshipment and other transfer activities through advance notifications and transshipment declarations.
The NPFC Secretariat, with funding from Canada, has developed an online system for users to submit the transshipment reports required under the new measure. Over the past two years, the system has been developed and improved through the efforts of the Secretariat staff who worked closely with the technical contractors to ensure that any technical issues were resolved and that the system was running smoothly.
While recognizing that an increasing number of users are already using the online system, Canada is proposing to make the use of the online transshipment system mandatory by January 1, 2026. This would minimize the need for manual entry of the data by the Secretariat. Up to this point, reports have been sent via email, often as PDFs, and the Secretariat has been manually verifying and entering the information into the system.
Given that the NPFC Secretariat is a very small organization with only 5 full-time staff, this has been a significant strain on their resources and capacity. The use of the online system would free up Secretariat resources to focus on other priorities, such as the analysis and cross-validation of the reported data and identification of trends.
To note:
• This proposal does not preclude users from continuing to use the online system prior to the deadline of January 1, 2026.
• This proposal allows for reports to be submitted to the online system using the application programming interface (API).
• This change will not affect observer reports, which will still be able