“There is more urgency than ever to protect fish stocks in the Pacific,” said Marshall Islands Minister Mattlan Zackhras, who represented his country at the Parties to the Nauru Agreement meeting that concluded Friday in Majuro. “If we don’t do anything as the resource owners, then we’re not doing our part for future generations to benefit from the resource.”
The eight PNA members — Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu — agreed to cut fishing days from an estimated 40,000 this year to 28,469 in 2011, a 30 percent reduction. The PNA controls Pacific waters where about 25 percent of the world’s tuna is caught.
Under a system known as the “vessel day scheme,” the PNA nations sell “fishing days” instead of licensing a set number of vessels to fish in the region. But while the vessel day scheme has been in place for three years, the number of days have not been strictly enforced, reducing its effectiveness for conservation of tuna stocks and increasing the price of tuna for the islands.
“The islands have set hard limits but have had difficulty in actually doing it,” said industry representative Phil Roberts of Tri-Marine International, one of the world’s largest suppliers of tuna, who attended the talks in Majuro. “The proposal to cut to 28,000 fishing days in 2011 means they will have to cut back a lot of boats. If they don’t, they will never get fishing under control.”
Zackhras said there is determination to reduce the level of fishing following scientific reports tabled at the meeting that show bigeye tuna is being over-fished and fishing for yellowfin tuna is at the outer limits of sustainability.
“There is a strong commitment from all countries,” Zackhras said. “We will see a lot of changes in the coming year.”
“All presentations emphasized the opportunity that PNA now has to reshape the fishery by creating scarcity, maintaining high fish prices through hard limits (on fishing), and influencing markets through restricting where fish caught in PNA waters can be landed and processed,” said the communiqué from the meeting.
In addition to setting stricter limits on fishing for 2011, the PNA officials “expressed general dissatisfaction” with a treaty that gives United States flagged vessels access to the entire region, saying it negatively effects implementing the vessel day scheme, constrains conservation measures, and does not support the goal of the islands to get more investment and other benefits from the fishing industry.
The PNA also criticized Taiwan for “undermining” small island countries efforts to develop their domestic fishing industries. The PNA said Taiwan has denied or delayed providing the islands with newly constructed fishing vessels by forcing the islands to go through a lengthy process of gaining approval of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission that regulates fishing on the high seas.
“We have to go through this process to get approval every time we want to get a purse seiner built in Taiwan,” said Zackhras. “It’s a sovereignty issue. We shouldn’t have to do this.” He said two fishing boats recently built in Taiwan were supposed to go into a joint venture arrangement with the Marshall Islands. “Taiwan wouldn’t give them to us,” he said. “They gave the two purse seiners we’d ordered to the U.S. flag. We’ve had to wait four years to get new boats.”
