Fish Wars

Preparing Pacific tuna in Japan. Photo: Greg Mccartney,/Prime Light Photo

In any survey of an industry as big as fisheries in an ocean as huge as the Pacific, there are bound to be bright spots as well real worries. Though there is a huge international regulatory and advisory bureaucracy in the region, few scientists or officials are brave enough to talk frankly about the dangers facing one of the only consistent resources enjoyed by all Pacific Island countries.

In some places around the region that resource is being squandered by a multiplicity of interests competing to supply voracious overseas markets.

Those interests include foreign fleets from China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Europe-they pay big money in license fees, bribes or quid pro quo aid to Pacific Island countries. Just as insidious is the pressure from local fisheries officials to grant as many licenses as possible-in some places far more licenses than scientists have recommended. This has led to the economic collapse of many locally based fishing companies around the region.

This is not the same as saying the fish stocks are collapsing, though in some areas that might be true. Rather, it is a collapse of economic viability as more and more vessels in a given area drive down the catch numbers for each operator, whether foreign or local.

In Samoa, catches have fallen so dramatically, that even well-established, well-managed local companies like Apia Export Fish Packers are having a rough go. (See our story on them in the September 2003 issue of Pacific Magazine.)

In Tonga, the situation is also grim. There are local companies, a government-owned company (Sea Star), and quite a few charter companies using Chinese vessels. Altogether there are 33 licensed longline vessels in the kingdom, but only five are active.

The local banking sector has no confidence in the industry after losing substantial money when a large company called Friendly Island went into receivership. High costs from importing bait and equipment from New Zealand, high fuel costs and high airfreight charges have exacerbated the situation. While the local fishing industry is making noises about government aid, that prospect is highly unlikely given the current state of the Tongan economy.

Fiji presents perhaps the most archetypal example of the fish wars between local private enterprise and local fisheries bureaucracies. Graham Southwick is both owner of the local Fiji Fish Marketing Group and coordinator of the Fiji Tuna Boat Association, an interest group made up of local fishing operators. In essence, Southwick has accused local fisheries officials, both former and current, of accepting bribes for granting fishing licenses to offshore operators-many more licenses, in fact, than are sustainable in Fiji's Exclusive Economic Zone.

"Half the Fiji fleet is owned by the government of China, represented by several agents and about half are locally owned," Southwick says by telephone from Fiji, "and this is the fundamental issue. Both the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, which is the scientific body and the Forum Fisheries Agency, which is the regional regulatory body, have said that in the case of the Fiji EEZ waters, no more that 55 boats should be operating. The Fiji boat owners have been saying the same thing since 1995."

But in 2000, the Fiji Fisheries Department stated it would allow up to 220 licenses to be granted. "We reacted pretty strongly to that," Southwick says, "and an inquiry was held in 2001. After the inquiry, the government rejected the 220 figure and decided on 110."

This is still two times the consensus recommendation. According to Southwick, there are currently 101 active licenses in Fiji. The result? "We've got 50 to 60 boats this year tied up in dock and going bankrupt. In the year 2000, with 40 boats active, the average catch was 250 tons of yellowfin, bigeye and albacore. In 2003, with about 80 boats actively fishing, we've been catching 50 tons per boat." According to the association, a catch needs to be at 300 tons per vessel to be economically viable.

"This is not a biological crash," Southwick emphasizes, "it's an economic crash."

While regional fisheries agencies are cautious speaking on the record, since countries such as Fiji are members who contribute money to the regional organizations, privately, the scientists are more direct. In a 2001 email obtained by Pacific Magazine, former SPC fisheries administrator Tony Lewis writes to a colleague that "…our [SPC] submission to the (Fiji Fisheries) Management Plan is obviously going to be ignored by Fisheries/Fiji Govt, and is presumably now not even on the table." Talking about TAC, or Total Allowable Catch, Lewis adds, "efficiency per vessel continues to increase… and hence only 49 efficient vessels (are) needed to take the TAC." Ending his message, Lewis says, "This whole process has been little short of disgraceful."

Meanwhile, in Fiji, the Tuna Boat Association has publicly alleged that Permanent Secretary for Fisheries Vuetasau Buatoka, his director, Maciu Lagibalavu and deputy fisheries director Malakai Tuiloa have all been taking bribes from Chinese agents in exchange for longline tuna licenses.

Similar questions about compromised local fisheries bureaucracies have been raised in several countries, including the Solomons, the Marshall Islands and Papua New Guinea.

In PNG, in addition to recent political interference in the fisheries agency, one of the biggest issues concerns devices known as FADs, Fish Aggregation Devices. These are either floating or anchored devices that that attract large schools of fish.

How they work is not known for sure, but they do attract fish and PNG fisheries has licensed a number of Philippine firms to set out anchored FADs and the purse seiners operated by those companies have "exclusive" use of the harvests produced FADS. What worries some fisheries experts is that is beginning to look like FAD catches impact heavily on juvenile yellowfin and bigeye populations, thus damaging future reproductive potential. Regional scientists will say, off the record, that there may be some overfishing of yellowfin and juvenile bigeye.

In the North Pacific, including Hawaii and Micronesia, Paul Dalzell, the senior scientist for the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, says that in general, "fish stocks are in reasonable shape even though the first half of 2003 was a lean year for everyone." But he is on the record when he adds that there is some evidence that "bigeye and yellowfin are at the point of being over-exploited and limits are already in place in the eastern Pacific."

In Hawaii, he says, the fishing has been improving due mostly to limits being placed on the longline fleet because of damage to turtle stocks.

"The future of Pacific fishing belongs to the markets and the market belongs to China and, to a lesser extent, to Japan. All the bêche de mer, all the live reef fish, all the shark fins go to China. The live reef fish industry has moved successively across the Pacific. It's always the shallow water fisheries that are the easiest to damage," adds Dalzell.

Yet in some parts of the region, where regulation is compromised by greed, corruption or incompetence, there is real danger that the demands of big-power markets-which Dalzell has called a "black hole for fish products"-will override any sense of stewardship and commitment to the long-term biological and economic health of the Pacific fishing industry.