Fisheries
Fishy Outlook For Tuna Fishery
But govts talking of conserving and placing limits
The outlook for the Pacific Islands tuna fishery is decidedly fishy. It is likely to get fishier yet.
Variations in how much as a percentage of the value of reported catches that islands governments collect from foreign fishermen, suggest that bribery pours a lot of money into the pockets of influential politicians and civil servants, according to fishing industry sources.
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If bribery isn¹t behind the setting of low official rates of fees, then some national fisheries departments and ministries are being taken for a ride, consultants suggest.
Variations in revenue received range from 14.8 percent of the estimated value of the reported catch for one country down to a mere 0.053 percent for another.
Measured as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), variations range from 42 percent to less than one-tenth of one percent. While the United States pays a rate of 10 percent of the catch of the value of tuna caught by its dwindling fleet Pacific purse seiner catchers, Japan pays only five percent, Taiwan 3.7 percent and Korea only 2.2. percent, according to World Bank figures.
Islands Business was told that in some recipient countries the explanation for low licence rates is that countries paying them are big aid donors. But the saving in lower fees far outweighs aid received. An average of about 1000 Asian and now only about 30 United States vessels have for the past three decades been the main fishers of the Central and Western Pacific tuna stock.
They are registered by the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), the Solomon Islands headquartered institution, through which Pacific Islands governments control fishing in their 200 miles exclusive economic zones. This fishery supplies about half the world¹s canned tuna market and one-third of the total supply.
In recent years, an average of around 1,000,000 tonnes of tuna a year is caught, valued at about US$2000 million at current market prices, according to the FFA.
However, the Pacific Islands benefit by only a fraction of the total price; US$70 million is a figure frequently quoted by the FFA. Islands Business was told that while fisheries access agreements negotiated between individual island governments and foreign fishers are filed at the FFA¹s headquarters, the actual financial terms never are. They are always kept shrouded in secrecy, with not even the national parliament informed.
Details are restricted to a small number of politicians and bureaucrats. Analysis of officially published data, market know-how and information from other sources pointed to the scope that exists for corruption, Islands Business was told.
Fisheries scientists with the Pacific Community¹s Oceanic Fisheries Programme (formerly known as the Tuna and Billfish Assessment Programme) are producing data that shows the big and valuable yellowfin tuna fish is now being overfished, as the small bigeye tuna already is. Islands governments are talking about further conserving stocks by placing more limits on the number of big purse seine class ships operating in their EEZs and asking fishermen to use large mesh net to reduce the amount of juvenile fish caught.
There are also proposals for limited fishing around fish aggregation devices (FADS). These are anchored rafts that attract small fish and hence larger predatory fish, like tuna, to their shelter. Pressure on the Pacific¹s tuna stock is expected to mount with the arrival in the Central and Western Pacific of the first units of the European fleet, which is turning to the region after badly over-fishing their Atlantic fisheries.
Kiribati earlier this year renewed a one-year agreement that allows up to about a dozen Spanish vessels to fish in its big EEZ. The agreement is reported to have been extended to Portuguese and Italian vessels. Islands Business understands that the European Union (EU) has now approached Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands for fishing rights.
EU officials have described the agreement with Kiribati as a ³model² and evidence of the EU¹s commitment to preserving the stock. However, Islands Business was told that Spanish fishermen are notorious violators of fishing rules.
Questions were put to the European Union office in Suva, but a reply had not been received by the time this edition went to press. The EU fishermen are reported to be paying for Kiribati rights at a rate of about seven percent of the catch value.
This has aroused speculation that Asian nations that pay low rates will have to offer more money if they want to retain their fishing licences; that is if Pacific nations that host them are serious about conserving stocks by limiting the number of licence issued.
