Marshall Islands Fisheries Minister Mattlan Zackhras said a “paradigm shift” has taken place in the tuna industry as islands are demanding a greater share of the fishing pie requiring the treaty to be “updated to take into account the many changes that have occurred” over the past several years.
U.S. State Department negotiator Williams Gibbons-Fly acknowledged the “possible need to reshape the treaty,” but said the long-standing agreement has established a “framework for cooperation” to ensure a successful outcome.
The treaty, first approved in 1988, expires in 2013. Critics say the treaty gives the U.S. tuna fleet access to lucrative Pacific fishing grounds for a fraction of the price Asian fishing companies are beginning to pay, and also allows the U.S. fleet to avoid tuna fishing cutbacks aimed at sustaining stocks.
The group of islands that control waters where 25 percent of the world’s tuna are caught is demanding major changes to the treaty.
“We would like the treaty to continue,” Eugene Pangelinan, the deputy director of fisheries for the Federated States of Micronesia, said in an interview Saturday in Majuro. “But we do want change. The treaty was the best deal we could have asked for at one point but today it is worst deal in terms of revenue return.”
He called the treaty a model for cooperation with the United States, but said the “economic package needs to be addressed.”
The treaty provides $21 million annually to the islands to allow up to 40 purse seiners to fish.
“The treaty was the best in its day,” said Maurice Brownjohn, the commercial manager for the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, the eight nations that control ocean zones where the bulk of tuna is caught in the Pacific. “But the revenue (from the United States) would have to increase 10 times for it to approach today’s value.”
Brownjohn said proposals have been submitted to the U.S. to remove treaty provisions that exempt U.S. vessels from compliance with tuna controls now enforced on Asian and other fleets, and to consider U.S. investment and commercial opportunities in the islands.
It’s not a cut and dried negotiation between two sides. The 17 islands represented by the Forum Fisheries Agency in the talks with the U.S. are a competing mix of three major interests: the PNA group that wants a treaty revamp, the non-PNA nations, many of which like the treaty because it provides aid regardless of whether fish are actually caught in their ocean zones, and Papua New Guinea, the largest country in the region with rich fishing grounds and multiple fish canneries and processing facilities. “It’s a complex situation,” Pangelinan said of the island side. “But the Forum Fisheries Agency is trying to get a better deal for everyone.”
“We all share common ground at the end of the day,” said Papua New Guinea Foreign Ministry official Stanley Arua. “We want to sustain the resource.”
“There are a lot of questions,” Gibbons-Fly acknowledged at Saturday’s opening. “What will the treaty look like after 2013? Will there be a treaty after 2013?” With the “mutual respect and understanding” developed over 23 years of tuna treaty ties, “we can achieve a renewed treaty.”
