The best news coming out of this year’s Western and Central Fisheries Commission annual meeting for the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) is the Commission’s adoption on its last day of meetings in Fiji of a measure to improve the safety of fisheries observers.
Other positive news from the annual meeting for the Parties to the Nauru Agreement is confirmation that the multi-billion dollar skipjack tuna industry is being effectively managed on its target reference point for stock sustainability.
‘This shows that PNA’s vessel day scheme works,’ said PNA CEO Ludwig Kumoru. ‘The VDS limits fishing effort to sustainable levels.’
He also said there was some useful progress on work to develop harvest control strategies and management measures that are expected to lead to improved long-term management of the tuna fishery.
‘Beyond this, progress at this year’s WCPFC annual meeting was limited,’ he said, adding that the outpouring of anger and call for a vote by island nations when the WCPFC was initially unable to get consensus to adopt a fisheries observer safety measure demonstrates the determination of the islands to raise the bar for protecting its fisheries observers. Not long before the meeting wrapped on the last day, consensus on the observer measure was reached, cancelling the need for a vote.
‘Observer safety is a huge concern for PNA nations, so we are happy this measure has gone through to protect the men and women who are at the front line of our fishery,’ said Ludwig Kumoru, adding that the PNA has pushed hard for 100% observer coverage.
But PNA also expressed disappointment that recommendations for an urgently needed stock rebuilding strategy for northern Pacific bluefin tuna were not offered by the relevant committee to the WCPFC during its annual meeting.
‘The observer safety measure was the biggest development at this year’s annual meeting. And some progress was made for developing harvest control strategies and management measures that will lead to improved management of our tuna fishery,” he said. “These measures take time to develop and the PNA group is looking forward to seeing substantial progress on these, as well as development of the tropical tuna ‘bridging’ measure, over the coming year,’ he said and made the point that while seeing modest progress on management issues ‘distant water fishing nations are using the WCPFC as vehicle to promote and protect their interests in the fishery. We see this in several big nations’ attempts to get extra fishing days, prevent expansion of our domestic fleets and get access to trade information on the VDS.’
‘The challenge we face is continuous attempts by distant water fishing nations to undermine the vessel day scheme that manages fishing effort in our zones, and to obstruct our attempts to expand our fishing fleets,’ he said.
‘Solomon Islands head of delegation Ferral Lasi made this clear during the plenary when he objected on behalf of PNA and all Forum Fisheries Agency members to a proposal by Japan to limit vessel capacity, which is simply a move to protect existing distant water fishing fleets. The lack of an effective strategy to rebuild northern Pacific bluefin stocks emphasises the entrenched interests that want to maintain the status quo despite the urgency of the stock level,’ he said. This lack of action on northern Pacific bluefin tuna – a high seas fishery controlled by distant water fishing nations – shows clearly where the roadblocks to rebuilding and conserving stocks are coming from.’
