David Brooks Yahoo News 2 Dec 07;
Delegates from over 40 countries began meeting Monday at a Pacific fisheries conference in Guam amid warning signs the world's last great tuna fishery is heading for crisis.
Some argue the western and central Pacific fishery -- which supplies over half the world's tuna -- is in trouble already.
Attempts to improve conservation measures will be put to the five-day meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, which includes delegates from Pacific nations and major fishing countries.
"We still believe there is time for this commission to change course to save our fisheries and our future," Greenpeace's Fiji-based oceans campaigner Tagi Toribau told AFP.
Prized for top quality sashimi in Japan and as a source of cheap canned protein on supermarket shelves all over the world, tuna stocks have been slashed in most of the world's oceans.
The future of the comparatively healthy western and central Pacific tuna fishery is crucial for small Pacific states. Tuna is the only major economic resource for many, as well as one of the most important food sources.
Currently licence fees provide them a small return of around five to six percent of the three billion US dollar annual catch in the region.
The commission believes the two most endangered species -- yellowfin and bigeye -- need a reprieve if the fishery is to remain sustainable.
The bigeye catch needs to be reduced by 25 percent and yellowfin by 10 percent, commission executive director Andrew Wright told AFP.
Stocks of the most common species skipjack are believed to be healthy, although it is less valuable than bigeye and yellowfin and usually ends up in cans.
Skipjack is usually caught in nets by sophisticated purse-seine fishing vessels from countries including Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea and other so called distant water fishing nations.
The purse-seiners accounted for 72 percent of the total catch in the region last year.
But the purse-seiners -- some modern hi-tech vessels are capable of catching up to 10,000 tonnes annually -- also catch large numbers of juvenile yellowfin and bigeye as bycatch.
Long-line boats capable of reeling out massive lines carrying thousands of baited hooks catch most of the mature bigeye and yellowfin, which are sold at premium prices on the fresh tuna market.
Greenpeace argues the commission has under-estimated the impact of illegal and unreported fishing.
It says the fishing effort in the western and central Pacific needs to be cut by half if tuna stocks are to remain healthy, although Wright says this would be politically and economically impossible to impose.
Maurice Brownjohn, president of the Papua New Guinea Fishing Industry Association, says there is already a crisis in some areas of the region.
"If you look at the state of the domestic industries of the island countries, PNG has got less than 20 boats operating out of 80 domestic long-liners," he said.
"The Solomons has lost its domestic long-line fleet and Fiji I think is down to 60 or 70 percent.
"This is mirrored throughout the Pacific and has happened in just the last couple of years with the downturn of the fishery."
Greenpeace's Toribau said apart from cutting fishing effort, Greenpeace will press at this week's meeting for marine reserves set up in some international waters in the region to safeguard breeding areas.
It also wants a ban on catches being transferred from fishing vessels to larger transport ships at sea, a practice which makes it harder to detect illegal fishing and unreported catches.
Brownjohn is sceptical that the major fishing nations will accept their responsibility to reduce fishing.
"They are not interested in not bringing in any measures which would detrimentally affect their industryÂ’s operations or cut the supply of raw materials for their processors."
Even the commission's Wright is pessimistic about prospects for effective conservation measures in the short term.
"What you might find -- and maybe it's 10 years down the track -- is that the resources do become overexploited and you have to experience a crisis in the fishery before governments do take the difficult decisions to re-establish the fisheries on a sustainable basis."
