To accomplish this goal, a meeting this week in the capital of the Marshall Islands aims to flesh out details of plans to tighten conservation controls, reduce annual catch limits and increase revenue to the islands, said Transform Aqorau, director of the new headquarters for the Parties to the Nauru Agreement that is based in Majuro.
“There are far too many days available for fishing and too many boats fishing in the region now,” Aqorau said Sunday. Reducing the number of days and vessels fishing will accomplish both conservation and revenue generation goals.
Three days of meetings by officials from the eight nations that comprise the PNA — Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Tuvalu and Marshall Islands — will be followed Thursday by a one-day ministers’ meeting to approve tuna plans and policies.
The fishing headquarters in Majuro, opened in February, will also be officially dedicated Thursday, an event that is bringing Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Tuiloma Neroni Slade and Forum Fisheries Agency Director Tanielu Sua to Majuro this week.
Two key issues facing these western Pacific nations is “to make a new Ovessel day scheme’ work effectively and to come up with a fisheries management model that will allow us to control the catch levels,” Aqorau said. The vessel day scheme is switching from the longstanding licensing of 205 purse seiners to fish in these Pacific waters to selling “days” with fishing boats graded according to sophistication and tonnage.
“Increasing revenue by cutting the number of boats and days for fishing will increase the value of the fishery,” he said. “Conservation is at the heart of the issue.
The biggest problem now is there is no scarcity.”
While most focus has been on purse seiners — the large fishing boats that use a huge net to scoop up schools of tuna — this PNA meeting will look at plans for a vessel day scheme for long line fishing boats that supply tuna to the sashimi market, focusing on big eye and yellow fin tuna. Scientists report that both species are being overfished and are in danger without significant reductions in annual catches.
“We still need to further reductions in catch,” Aqorau said.
PNA nations have already closed two high seas “pockets” in between the exclusive economic zones of their member countries, and have banned use of “fish aggregation devices” for three months of the year.
“The FAD control is still not enough,” Aqorau said. He indicated the ban of FAD use could be increased. And he expects action to close additional high seas pockets to fishing as mandated at the first PNA Presidential summit held in Palau in late February.
