Officials from eight member nations of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement agreed to extend a tuna fishing ban to high seas areas stretching from Palau and Papua New Guinea in the West to Kiribati in the East, Marshall Islands in the North to Tuvalu in the South. The ban on purse seine fishing in these high seas areas is to take effect on Jan. 1, 2011.
“It’s not going to be easy (to get acceptance of the closure),” said Sylvester Pokajam, managing director of Papua New Guinea’s National Fisheries Authority. “But it will have a great impact on bigeye tuna that is being overfished.”
“This will require a big adjustment for purse seine vessels,” said Anouk Ride, the Forum Fisheries Agency’s media official. “The high seas closure will help control (tuna catches).”
Palau’s Marine Resources Director Nanette Malsol said she believes the closure will help in the fight against illegal fishing. “There is a lot of illegal and unregulated fishing in high seas areas,” she said. “Countries bordering these areas are struggling with it.”
Pokajam, who represents the country among the PNA with the largest domestic fisheries operation, said he was very satisfied with the week of meetings in Majuro that produced agreement on high seas closures and discussed other tuna conservation measures.
But the next step is for the new PNA secretariat in Majuro to work individually with the eight countries to coordinate national fisheries priorities with the overall agenda of the PNA to generate greater economic returns from the $3 billion annual tuna catch in the Pacific.
In addition to PNG and Palau, PNA members are Marshall Islands, Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
