It is fact that the Pacific Islands are full tuna resources but they are complaining that they are not capturing the full economic benefits of it. Tuna plays a huge role in the global food industry and much of the tuna caught, canned and eaten annually around the world comes from the Pacific. The results of a recent study by the EU-funded DevFish project outline the best options for capturing the maximum economic benefits of the industry.
According to the study various models of purse-seine operation and measured the economic benefits generated by tuna purse-seine fishing and the associated processing industry, with the aim of guiding domestic development decisions. It is fact that most of the tuna caught in the Pacific are taken by purse-seine fishing, an efficient method in which a large net is set around a school of tuna and closed or ‘pursed’ at the bottom to trap the fish.
In the Pacific, purse-seine fishing is concentrated near the equator with nearly all the catch coming from the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of eight Pacific Islands countries. It is said that the high capital and operating costs of purse seiners have made it difficult for Pacific Islands companies to participate and the fishery has been dominated by the fishing fleets of other countries. Currently foreign-owned vessels under licence arrangements with Pacific Islands governments mostly take the catch.
According to the DevFish study the economic benefits that could be secured by the domestic development of this industry, using six measures of economic impact. The study revealed that these measures were value added (this key measurement is calculated as the value of goods produced by an enterprise, less the cost of goods and services purchased from other firms.
