What does temperature have to do with the price of fish? In Europe, quite a lot. It is the difference between a can of tuna and a plate of sashimi. As ELENOA MASI-BASELALA reports, for Pacific Island nations, it could mean the difference between keeping or losing access to the world’s largest tuna market, worth more than $USD 15 billion.
IN a training room in Suva, Competent Authority (CA) officials from Fiji, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu are learning about refrigerant pipes. Most of them trained as either health inspectors or fisheries officials and this is not what they expected when they took on their jobs.
But Ratu Jope Tamani, Market Access Specialist at the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), is patient and methodical.
He draws diagrams. He talks about what happens inside the pipes on a fishing vessel, the physics of cooling, the engineering of freezing and watches the room absorb something most of them have never had to think about before.
The reason all of them are here is because of Delegated (European Union) Regulation 2025/1449, effective on January 27, an amendment to Annex III of Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 on how tuna is frozen onboard fishing vessels before it reaches European consumers.
Adopted on July 18, 2025, the regulation is highly technical and sets strict requirements for fish freezing and storage.
For Pacific Island nations exporting fish to the EU, understanding the regulation is not optional, it is essential.
Why temperatures now matter
The regulation targets vessels that use brine freezing systems, a method where fish are frozen in a specially prepared saltwater solution to bring their temperature down rapidly after being caught. Roughly 97 per cent of fishing vessels operating in the Pacific use this method, meaning the regulation affects the majority of the region’s tuna fleet.
Under the previous rules, the focus was largely structural. CA officials assessed whether a vessel had the required equipment, documentation, and approvals. The new regulation goes further, requiring proof that cooling systems perform as intended and drawing a clear distinction between two categories of product.
Fish frozen to minus nine degrees Celsius (9°C) or colder can be exported for canning, where the sterilisation process destroys harmful microorganisms. But fish intended for direct human consumption, including steaks, sashimi, and retail products, must be frozen to minus 18 degrees Celsius (18°C) or colder within 96 hours of being caught.
To qualify for approval, a vessel must submit a validation plan showing that its freezing system can consistently reach and maintain that temperature throughout a fishing trip.
“When tuna is not frozen correctly, bacteria produce histamine in the fish flesh, a toxin that cannot be removed by cooking or further processing and that causes scombroid poisoning, with symptoms ranging from rashes and nausea to severe allergic reactions,” Mr Tamani explained.
The EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed recorded a rising number of such cases, contributing to the introduction of the new requirements. Vessels already on EU-approved lists can continue exporting but any new vessel seeking approval or any existing vessel seeking an upgraded listing must comply immediately.
The responsibility for verifying compliance sits entirely with each country’s National Competent Authority, the government body responsible for inspecting, certifying, and approving seafood exports.
“If they fail, the whole country fails,” emphasises Mr Tamani.
More than a signature
For years, the job of a CA officer was understood in a particular way. You inspected. You checked the documentation. You signed health certificates. The new regulation changes that.
A CA officer now needs to understand how an onboard cooling system actually functions, including the role of the refrigerant, the mechanics of brine concentration, the relationship between a vessel’s cold storage capacity and the temperature it can sustain over a two-week fishing trip. It is engineering knowledge. And most CA officers were not hired for it.
“The CA job is a job that is a cut above almost everyone else,” Mr Tamani says. “It requires more attitude than anything else. It’s a job of someone that is willing to work under duress, under pressure but has systematic thinking and is willing to learn.”
He is direct about the gap. In some countries, recruitment processes have not kept pace with the growing technical demands of the role.
His analogy is blunt: “You cannot train a cat to bark, if the recruitment is wrong, no amount of training fully corrects it.” But training still matters.
The ten-day programme in Suva consisted of five days of foundational knowledge followed by five days focused on applying the regulation.
Mr Tamani knows it is not possible to produce fully formed technical auditors, but the goal is more modest and more important, which is to give CA officers enough understanding of freezing systems to read a validation plan intelligently, ask the right questions during vessel inspections, and engage with industry on equal footing.
By the end of the week, that appears to be working. One participant says she is glad Mr Tamani covered the engineering component first.
“If he just told us what to do,” she says.
“I wouldn’t understand how we arrived at it.”
Tamani knows what is at stake. He led Fiji’s Food Safety Unit through the process of Fiji re-entering the EU market in 2010 after the country lost its fish export listing in 2008.
That experience shapes his approach to the work he does now across the region. Effective regulation, he says, begins with competent people.
“Develop people and the results will follow,” he says.
Four nations, four realities
The Pacific is not one story. The four countries represented at the training are at very different points in their compliance journey, and they face different problems getting there. Kiribati is among the best prepared. The country’s EU-listed vessels are already equipped with Automatic Temperature Recording Devices that continuously monitor fish well temperatures. Traceability systems are established and engineers maintain detailed records that can be accessed by the Competent Authority on demand.
Tereere Tioti, Director of the Competent Authority Division at the Ministry of Fisheries and Ocean Resources in Kiribati, says the regulation does not require a system overhaul but a stronger understanding of the new validation plan requirements and how to assess them.
“Regional technical support is extremely important,” she says, “particularly in strengthening inspection capability, regulatory implementation and staff competency.”
Solomon Islands comes into the training with nine EU-listed purse seine vessels already compliant for cannery supply. Patricia Soqoilo, Head of the Solomon Islands’ National Competent Authority, says the regulation causes no immediate disruption.
However, operators looking to move into direct human consumption markets face a more demanding pathway.
“It’s going to be costly,” Soqoilo says.
“For smaller owned fishing operations, with these new requirements, it would really challenge them.”
Fiji has more at stake than most. Under the Interim Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU, Fiji enjoys zero-tariff, unlimited-volume access to the European market for processed tuna, an advantage no Pacific country can afford to lose.
However, for brine-freezing operators upgrading freezer capacity, producing validation plans, amending Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point food safety management plans, and seeking reclassification from ZV (cannery supply) to ZVB (direct human consumption) listing all come at a cost, on top of existing pressures including lower tuna catches and rising fuel prices.
Taina Rauvala leads a team of 13 officers responsible for Fiji’s food safety oversight and EU export certification.
No Fijian exporter has been prevented from accessing the EU market. However, Rauvala says maintaining compliance remains the biggest challenge.
“Getting into the EU can be easy,” she says.
“Maintaining the standards consistently by the industry and the CA, that is the most challenging part.”
Her message to the region is clear.
“No CA, no EU export. CA are gatekeepers to market access.”
Tuvalu faces some of the greatest challenges of any country represented at the training.
CA officer, Alipate Momoka describes a country constrained by limited infrastructure, including unreliable water and electricity supply, land scarcity, and supply chain gaps, while remaining heavily dependent on fishing licenses for national revenue.
Tuvalu’s CA is working to secure EU approval for two Tuvalu-flagged vessels. Both are foreign-owned and currently freeze tuna only to minus nine degrees Celsius.
If vessel owners decide the additional investment needed to achieve minus 18 degrees Celsius is too costly, they may choose not to pursue EU approval.
“Seeing the company pulling out because of this new requirement will be detrimental for Tuvalu,” Mr Momoka says, “as it tries to expand its export capacity for economic growth.”
The gatekeepers of market access
The training ends with action plans and a long list of tasks still ahead.
Papua New Guinea is next on the schedule, with a programme tailored to its four major fisheries ports. The Marshall Islands are awaiting the outcome of a recent European Union audit. Solomon Islands may face an EU inspection visit within the year. Fiji and Kiribati continue to manage ongoing compliance requirements. Tuvalu is still working to secure approval for its first vessels.
For Tamani, the training is also a reminder of how international standards have helped strengthen fisheries management across the region.
“I’m really grateful to the European Union,” he says.
“Because they imposed a standard that, even though it’s tough, creates a lot of opportunity for growth, a lot of opportunity for competency development.”
As export requirements become more demanding, CA officers are playing an increasingly important role in protecting access to one of the world’s most valuable seafood markets.
The tuna leaving the Pacific for European consumers must now be colder, better monitored and more carefully certified than before. The work of making sure that happens falls to officers in small government units, many of them in some of the world’s most remote countries.
Their jobs are getting harder, the stakes are getting higher, and what they decide matters more than it ever did to the future of Pacific fisheries.
“That is why they are called competent officers and not capacity officers,” Mr Tamani says.
ELENOA Masi-Baselala is a senior journalist with extensive experience in Fiji and the region. She has reported on regional issues including women, human rights, the environment, and fisheries
