On Friday, regional efforts to reduce catches of these two species of tuna highly prized for sashimi received support from sports fishermen in the Marshall Islands who say they believe illegal fishing activity coupled with over-fishing by licensed vessels is causing a tuna drought in the western Pacific.
“Ten years ago, schools of yellowfin and bigeye tuna were abundant around Majuro atoll (the capital of the country),” said Marshalls Billfish Club President Chris deBrum. “Nowadays it is very difficult to run into a yellowfin school.” He said, “over-fishing and illegal fishing are directly contributing” to the plunge in availability of tuna for local fishermen.
On Dec. 8, officials from Pacific islands and distant water fishing nations meet in Busan, S. Korea for their annual five-day conference of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, more commonly known as the Tuna Commission. High on the agenda is developing conservation and management measures for yellowfin and big eye tuna. It is expected to be a contentious meeting as island fisheries officials want reductions in fishing levels while some Asian fishing nations say that the science does not support a cutback.
But deBrum, who regularly fishes himself, said reduction is urgently needed to maintain minimum levels of tuna stocks.
“As president of the Marshalls Billfish Club, I would like to call upon our colleagues in sport fishing clubs in the region to support the efforts of our individual governments and fishing agencies, in pushing hard for conservation and management measures that will control over-fishing of the tuna and billfish stocks that we are directly witnessing in our waters,” he said.
The Marshalls Billfish Club was founded in 1982 and operates about a dozen competitions annually for local and international sports fishermen.
DeBrum urged the Tuna Commission at its meeting next month to adopt stricter catch limits being called for by island fisheries officials.
The eight nations who control the most lucrative fishing area in the western Pacific as known as the “Parties to the Nauru Agreement” — from Kiribati in the east to Papua New Guinea in the west — have already agreed to tighten catch limits within their 200 mile exclusive economic zones. But there are still no effective control for high seas catches, which the Tuna Commission is supposed to regulate.
DeBrum said regional catch records show a significant level of fishing is concentrated in the waters of the PNA members, where record catches are being recorded by fishing vessels. “We are particularly pleased by the effort of the PNA members to reduce the level of catch by the fishing vessels (in their 200 mile EEZs),” deBrum said. “At the same time, as a sport fishing club, (we believe) stringent measures on the by-catch of billfish should be addressed.”
Scientists affiliated with the Pohnpei-based Tuna Commission and the Solomon Islands-based Forum Fisheries Agency began warning in the mid-2000s that bigeye tuna was being over-fished, and in 2006 began sounding alarms about catch levels of yellowfin tuna.
