WHILE New Zealand promotes a new plan for tuna management in the region, the Forum Fisheries Agency pushes a fisheries road map, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) waffles on action to control fishing on the high seas, and the long-term U.S. Pacific fisheries treaty appears on the edge of collapse, the Parties to the Nauru Agreement continue expanding their control of the region’s tuna fishery.
PNA’s increasingly high profile—its management of the purse seine fishery has skyrocketed revenue to its eight members from US$60 million five years ago to US$350 million this year, and it is now moving to manage the longline industry in the same manner—ruffles feathers in the industry and sometimes among non-PNA islands, but it generates results.
PNA has learned it gets results from initiatives that force management requirements in the lucrative PNA fishing zones when regional initiatives die ‘in committee,’ as has been the case with the last several annual meetings of the WCPFC. Both FFA and PNA are pushing several key management and conservation measures at the November 30 to December 8 marathon annual meeting of the WCPFC in Bali.
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