HAVING PROVEN THEIR VALUE VIA COLLABORATIVE PILOT PROJECTS, ELECTRONIC MONITORING SYSTEMS MUST NOW BE STANDARDIZED ACROSS FISHERIES. HOW TO GO ABOUT THAT IS ON THE AGENDA AS SCIENTISTS GATHER THIS MONTH TO ASSESS, ANALYZE AND PROBLEM SOLVE FOR THE PROTECTION OF ONE OF THE PACIFIC’S MOST IMPORTANT RESOURCES.

By Victor Restrepo  

1 August 2016 

Islands need to exploit resource to be key driver of economic growth

THE World Bank has just released a futuristic report on the tuna fishery of the Pacific Islands, only confirming what owners of the tuna stock in the islands have been harping about in the recent past. Authored by American researcher John Virdin of Duke University in North Carolina state, the report confirms that the Pacific Islands are owners of the only healthy stock of tuna remaining in the world, accounting, in his calculation, 34 per cent of world’s tuna catch every year, at an estimated value of US$3.4 billion.

“From this endowment, PICs (Pacific Island Countries) received net economic benefits on the order of US$500 million in 2013, majority of which came from the purse seine fishery in the waters of countries near the equator,” Virdin said in the summary of the World Bankcommissioned report.

“While not distributed evenly, these benefits have been significant for some PICs, for example with public revenues estimated to be equivalent to 36 per cent of GDP in Tuvalu, 32 per cent in Kiribati, and 10 per cent in FSM, and constituting a much higher proportion of the total public budget (e.g. 63 per cent in Kiribati in 2012).”

The exponential growth in the number of foreign and local fishing boats being allowed to fish in PIC waters was again underscored by the report. In 1980, there were 34 purse seine boats fishing in the Pacific, which jumped to 180 in 1990, 220 in 2006 and 344 in 2014. From a total catch of 100,000 metric tons of tuna in 1980, these boats were catching over 2 million tons 34 years later, in 2014.

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IN the far west of the northern Pacific, a single patrol boat stands against the waves of Distant Water Fishing Nation vessels which threaten the region’s fish stocks. Outnumbered and outgunned, the President Remelik will soon be replaced by a state of the art Australian ship complemented by a Japanese patrol vessel. But coming out of the west every day are fishing boats from as far afield as Myanmar and Vietnam who pillage the waters of the northern and south-western Pacific. Conservative estimates place the losses to the region through illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing at 306,440 tonnes worth anywhere between US$152.67million and US$616m. Palau’s Fisheries Minister, Urich Sengebau, says pirate vessels take four-five per cent of this catch – that is 11,000 tonnes worth about $20m.

The northern Pacific republic punches well above its weight in terms of ocean security and conservation. In October 2015, Palau passed a law converting 80 per cent of its territorial waters into a marine sanctuary, prohibiting commercial fishing, oil drilling, and seabed mining. “To provide alternative livelihoods for affected households, the government will promote ecotourism,” Sengebau said. “And we will charge a new environmental impact fee to replace lost revenues from banning commercial fishing in Palau.” Every traveller through Palau’s airports and wharves is charged $20 upon departure and this is channelled to government revenue. The country was forced to take the action after the Asian Development Bank projected that fishing licenses in Palau would decline by 8.5 per cent with the creation of the country’s Marine Sanctuary.

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It’s TUNA stocktake time

ON the docks of San Diego, Pacific fishing crews stand idle, their million dollar boats have nowhere to go. To the east the once accessible tuna grounds still teem with fish but the billion dollar catch will not make it to any US port in 2016. For once the Pacific has dared to stand up to the bullying tactics of industry by demanding that large fishing fleets honour the terms of their licences.

In January the US Tuna Boat Association – after months of testing the waters – refused to pay around $USD60 million in licences for its long line vessels. Pleading inability to pay because of increased business costs – including fuel prices – the association first attempted to give back 2000 fishing days which it had earlier wanted. The Pacific nations had sold the days – worth an estimated $USD20million – and knew they would lose millions of dollars if the deal did not go through.

Taking back the days would have forced the cost of a single fishing day – the unit by which licences sown across the board and had major repercussions on the industry and national economies. Taking the moral high ground, the Pacific declared that the licences to take tuna had been formalised in a contract and the US must pay at the agreed rate.

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Boats, payments in limbo

THE U.S. government officially announced in mid-January that it is pulling out of the U.S. Pacific islands fisheries treaty, a move that starts a 12-month clock ticking to terminate the nearly 30-year-old agreement that has given 40 American tuna boats unfettered access to the region’s lucrative fishing zones. This follows the U.S. industry default on January 1 on its quarterly payment of US$17 million that left the entire fleet without licenses to fish for the first time since the late 1980s.

The Forum Fisheries Agency has called a meeting in Nadi the first week of February to address the U.S. treaty withdrawal and its financial impact on the 17 island FFA members. A State Department official said the U.S. remains open to discussing restructuring of the treaty, which could prevent its demise. But the real problem to maintaining the treaty may simply be that it is not a ‘simple’ negotiation between two sides.

Within each side are two or more competing interests: On the island team, there is the ‘Big Eight’ plus Tokelau, where most of the tuna is caught and where most of the U.S. fishing revenue goes, and there are the less important islands in terms of fishing that benefit from the over US$600,000 annual payment the treaty has provided annually to each of the 17 FFA members regardless of where tuna is caught.