The inability of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) irks the European Commission. The Commission regrets their inability to agree on a new and effective approach to managing tropical tunas at its 7th annual meeting in Honolulu from 6 to 10 December.
The current arrangement has proved unable to protect these vulnerable stocks. Scientific advice points to the need to implement much stronger conservation measures, in particular for bigeye tuna, where a 30 percent reduction in fishing mortality is needed. The EU now proposes a new approach based on a full closure of the purse seine fishery for three months each year. This system would be straightforward to implement, applicable throughout the WCPFC Convention area, and easy to control and monitor.
It is very unfortunate that this proposal failed to find support for 2011, and has instead been packaged together with a number of other proposals for intersessional consideration during the year to come. The EU also backed a call by Japan to freeze capacity immediately in these fisheries until new management measures could be agreed, but negotiations to this end were derailed by the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), who instead supported a proposal by the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) to close the rest of the high seas area still open to fishery, in particular the so-called Eastern High Seas pocket.
The EU’s proposals on implementing the FAO Agreement on Port State Measures and on a Catch Documentation Scheme were opposed by the Pacific Island nations, and now remain on the table for further consideration by WCPFC Members.
