“The Parties to the Nauru Agreement leaders have had enough of selling licenses and being observers,” said Maurice Brownjohn, the PNA’s commercial manager. “We need more participation in jobs, manufacturing, and joint ventures.”
Fisheries ministers from the eight nations that comprise the PNA, which controls an ocean area where a majority of the more than $3 billion in tuna is caught every year, will meet in Majuro on Nov. 25-26 to review strategies to ratchet up management of a fishing industry long controlled by distant water fishing companies from Asia and the United States. The meeting is being held just 10 days before the annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission in Honolulu in early December where PNA plans to seek endorsement of a new plan to halt fishing in a high seas area the size of the continental United States beginning January 1, said Transform Aqorau, the director of the PNA office in Majuro.
The measure aimed at reducing the catch of bigeye tuna, which follows the PNA initiative last year of closing two high seas “pockets” to fishing, is expected to face opposition from some of the fishing nation members despite increasing concern by scientists that bigeye is being overfished and sustainability of the fishery is in danger.
“We are shaping and influencing international fisheries law in ways even we don’t appreciate yet,” Aqorau said of the PNA, which has flexed its muscles in regional fisheries policy the past three years and established its first secretariat in Majuro earlier this year. “No other group is taking as proactive steps as the PNA is doing (to manage fish stocks),” he said.
The meeting in Majuro will bring fisheries ministers together from the eight PNA nations — Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu and Nauru. “The emphasis is on business and economic development,” said Aqorau.
Working together, PNA nations can change the fisheries industry to their benefit, Aqorau said in an interview this week. “On our own, we cannot change the fisheries system in the Pacific,” he said. “Collectively, we can.” He said that access fees for foreign fishing vessels in the Pacific “should be double or triple what they are today. We are not yet benefiting from what is rightfully our resource.”
Aqorau, who previously was deputy director of the Forum Fisheries Agency in Honiara, said an advantage that the PNA office has over some regional agencies is it is not dependent on donor aid. “This organization is totally independent,” he said. “It was set up without donor support as an expression of self-determination.”
The PNA meeting at the end of November is also bringing representatives of tuna fishing and processing companies to Majuro to discuss business initiatives.
“PNA’s goal is to look at how it can improve the value of the product, rather than just selling licenses for boats to fish,” Brownjohn said. “We want to grow the ‘cake’ and take a bigger slice. We are looking at PNA participation throughout the system — fishing, licensing, processing and marketing.”
