Michael Perry, Reuters 21 May 08;
SYDNEY (Reuters) - South Pacific nations have taken steps to shore up dwindling tuna stocks, banning licensed tuna vessels from fishing in international waters between their islands and requiring them to always carry observers.
The new rules, agreed to at a fisheries meeting in Palau on Tuesday, will take effect from June 15, 2008.
"This is an historic moment for the Pacific, its people, marine life and future food security," Lagi Toribau, Greenpeace Australia's Pacific Oceans campaigner said on Wednesday.
Toribau was speaking from the environmental group's ship Esperanza, which has pestered tuna vessels in the Pacific in recent weeks as part of a campaign against overfishing of tuna.
Worldwide stocks of bigeye tuna, a prime source for Japanese restaurants serving sushi and sashimi around the world, are on the verge of collapse from overfishing, say conservationists.
The 4th Forum Fisheries Ministerial Meeting said in a statement that South Pacific island states had agreed to take immediate steps to protect bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks.
The ministers said "high seas enclaves or donut holes" between island nations would be declared off limits to commercial fishing. Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China are the main foreign tuna fishing nations operating in the South Pacific.
The ministers also agreed to prohibit the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs), or ocean buoys and floats which attract fish, for three months each year.
Tuna vessels will also have to continuously use automatic location communicators and vessel monitoring systems and carry fisheries observers at all times, the Forum said in a statement.
"Our region will achieve success if our countries band together to adopt and implement action plans to fight illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, both on national levels and with respect to fishing on the high seas," Palau Vice President Elias Chin told the meeting.
But Chin said the island states needed to "balance the need to preserve the fish stocks for future generations with the need to develop our economies and feed our people".
"FISH TOMORROW?"
In February the island nation Kiribati created the world's largest protected marine reserve, a California-sized watery wilderness covering 410,500 square km (158,500 square miles), to preserve tuna spawning grounds and coral reef biodiversity.
Greenpeace said decades of over-exploitation has reduced some of tuna stocks in the Pacific to just 15 percent of what they once were and that European fishing firms are now chasing tuna in the Pacific after tuna stocks fell in the Atlantic.
"It is time for fishing nations to realize that if they want fish tomorrow, we need marine reserves today," said Sari Tolvanen of Greenpeace International.
Scientists warn THAT stocks of the Atlantic bluefin tuna are dangerously close to collapse after a decade of overfishing, which has been driven by growing Asian demand for sushi.
A decline in bluefin stocks has increased demand for the bigeye tuna, which is fished in the Indian and Atlantic oceans and the Western and Central Pacific.
Indian Ocean tuna fishermen landed their smallest catch for 11 years in 2007, citing overfishing and warmer sea surface temperatures sending tuna into deeper ocean.
(Editing by John Chalmers)
Tuna fishing ban for South Pacific zones
Nick Squires, The Telegraph 30 May 08;
Tuna fishing is to be banned in two huge areas of the South Pacific in an attempt to halt the chronic over-exploitation of the highly prized fish.
The new rules, agreed to at a fisheries meeting this month, will come into effect on June 15.
They will create two vast fishing-free zones, one between Papua New Guinea and Palau, and another bounded by PNG, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.
The two high seas enclaves, or 'donut holes', are outside the countries' respective exclusive economic zones.
The restrictions were drawn up by a group of eight South Pacific states, which despite being among the smallest nations in the world have some of the largest and richest fishing grounds.
Tuna vessels fishing within their exclusive economic zones will have to carry fisheries observers at all times.
And ocean floats used to attract huge numbers of fish, known as fish aggregating devices or FADs, will be banned for the third quarter of each year.
"This is an historic moment for the Pacific, its people, marine life and future food security," said Lagi Toribau, Greenpeace Australia's Pacific Ocean campaigner.
Toribau was speaking from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, which in recent weeks has roamed the Pacific, hunting down tuna boats and protesting against the overfishing of two key tuna species: the yellowfin and the bigeye, a main source of sushi and sashimi.
The Pacific holds the last relatively robust populations of tuna and provides half the tuna consumed globally.
But the fish are under threat from Asian fishing fleets which have exhausted their own waters. European boats are also turning to the Pacific, as Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks dwindle as a result of a decade of over-fishing.
"A lot of the over-fishing is being done by boats from countries like China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea," said Seremaia Tuqiri, the Fiji-based South Pacific fisheries policy officer for WWF. "There are also pirate vessels coming in from South America."
Greenpeace says that unless "drastic action" is taken, yellowfin and bigeye tuna will be critically over-fished within three years. Some tuna stocks in the Pacific have been reduced to 15 per cent of what they once were.
While fisheries experts welcomed the announcement of the two protected enclaves, there was concern about how the new rules would be implemented.
Cash-strapped South Pacific nations' "navies" rarely amount to more than a handful of coastal patrol boats, often donated second hand by Australia or New Zealand.
"How on earth are they going to get compliance?" said Anissa Lawrence, head of Oceanwatch Australia, a marine sustainability NGO. "It's a brilliant idea but enforcement will be a real challenge for these small countries."
But Duncan Leadbitter, Asia-Pacific director of the Marine Stewardship Council, disagreed. "Papua New Guinea has a very sophisticated management regime and is more than capable of enforcing the rules," he said from Tuna 2008, the tuna industry's annual conference in Bangkok.
