Business
Big Worries for Pacific Fishing
Countries need to act now, otherwise...
By 2010, when the population of the Pacific Islands is expected to have climbed to 8.9 million people, the region's domestic fish supply need will be about 170,000 tonnes a year There¹s one supply of fish to count on, provided that it is not overfished. The Pacific Islands have the world¹s largest tuna fishery. It yields around a million tonnes a year. This translates into about 60 percent of the world's canned tuna supply.
Most other fishing in the region is inshore, along, and within coral reefs and is therefore highly vulnerable.
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A switch from subsistence to commercial fishing in these areas leads to over-fishing.
A worry is that having wiped out their local supplies, Asian live reef fish fishermen are turning to the Pacific Islands reefs for the supply of the Asian restaurant trade.
There are worries about the biological, social and economic sustainability of live fish capture, especially in spawning grounds. Island countries need to quickly formulate their live reef fish trade policy if they have not already done so.
Aquaculture has yet to make a big impact on Pacific Islands economies. But governments are realising that it could do so. They are beginning restocking and stock enhancement projects intended to make aquaculture a significant business.
There's not much information about the region's acquaculture output except for pearl oysters, prawns and seaweed. Countries usually lack specific acquaculture laws and there are constraints like limited domestic markets, dependence on high added-value export markets, transport hitches, fragile habitats, research and damage caused by cyclones.
There is a need to work on better production methods for species farmed now and on growing new species. With exports, it is vital that shipments of fish comply rigidly with quality rules now demanded by the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
The rules assure buyers that the catch has been processed, transported and marketed in ways to minimise health risks.
In 1997 the Food and Agricultural Organisation in collaboration with the Pacific Community launched an effort to have model food control laws and quality assurance adopted by island countries.
This has preserved the United States as a market and has opened Europe as a market of good potential.
Further work by the Food and Agricultural Organisation is designed to assist Pacific Islands exporters meet all international seafood trading rules so that they can export to anywhere in the world.
There's a lot to be learnt about Pacific Islands fisheries from statistics. But the collection of facts and figures about the industry needs to be improved.
Backed by Japan, the Food and Agricultural Organisation is working on improving fishery databases through a series of meetings on data management and collect systems.
