Fiji's Tuna Industry - the Saga continues!

Foreign distant water fleets: reaping and pillaging the SoPac. Source. 

Remember?

And I cite.

The number of vessels fishing for tuna continues to increase in the Pacific, with last year’s 297 fishing boats setting an all-time high. 
But 45 more purse seiners are now under construction in Asian shipyards, which will “cause sustainability problems in the fishery,” he said and raised “serious concerns about the increasing number of vessels fishing in the region.

“What we now see from the 2012 fishing data is more boats in the fishery, higher overall catches, smaller fish sizes and the lowest ever levels of fisheries biomass for these tuna stocks.”

Marshall Islands fisheries Director Glen Joseph said as bad as it sounds, the situation is worse. “It’s not just bigeye tuna raising concern,” he said. “Swordfish catches are raising a red flag.”
And yellowfin tuna is reported by scientists to be near its maximum sustainable yield. “If distant water fishing nations support sustainability of the resource, then they need to commit to a 30 percent reduction in catches,” Joseph said. “It’s not a question of should they do it or not. They have to do it or face the consequences.”

And here's another one.

Many blame the foreign tuna fishing fleets with their large-scale operations that buy the rights to fish in Western and Central pacific fisheries, and whose numbers are steadily increasing.
In the past decade, China's fishing fleet has ballooned with hundreds of new heavily state-subsidised boats now operating in the southern Albacore tuna fishery.
Greenpeace's Nathaniel Pelle says in return the Pacific nations are paid access fees but often their slice of the estimated $7 billion a year Pacific tuna industry is less than 10 per cent.

Rosetti Imo, a bio-economist with the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, says the loss of the local tuna industry would be a huge economic blow for the region.
"In terms of value to the Pacific islands and how our economies rely on this resource its very, very valuable and most of our small economies rely on this resource absolutely", he said.

Fisheries management experts say one solution might be withdrawing or cutting back foreign access to their exclusive economic zones.
Greenpeace's Nathaniel Pelle agrees: “In the long term there is no benefit of having this system of reliance on selling access to foreign vessels, the economic benefit is going to come from having a stable fishing population.” 

Looks like everybody knows what needs to be done.

Leadership anybody?  

Is Fiji losing its Tuna Industry?

Same old same old - re-read this post! Click for detail!

Remember?

Now it could well be too late.

Fiji Fish has closed down its Tuna fishing arm and another prominent player has stopped half of its fleet and is laying off its staff.

Government is promising action and we shall see where this goes.

Let's hope this is not too little too late.

When I wrote that post linked at the top, Greenpeace had not yet published its report and upon finally reading it, I cannot but fully agree with every single word - read it, it is as short as it is compelling!

There are plenty of good recommendations but for me, the take-away message is that the shenanigans need to stop, the fishery needs to become sustainable and that monitoring, enforcement and prosecution need to improve - but above all, that our local governments need to build capacity towards developing smaller scale and locally owned fisheries whilst telling those industrial and highly subsidized foreign-owned vessels to fuck off!

To be continued no doubt!

Is Fiji's Tuna Industry facing Extinction?

Canned Tuna. There's heaps upon heaps of it - but is it possibly too cheap?

I was frankly dismayed by this article.
No not about the fact that the Tuna Industry wants to keep exploiting Sharks - that I knew already.
I was dismayed because apparently, Fiji's Tuna Industry is facing total collapse.

If so, fishing for Sharks will not save it.
It would merely establish a second unsustainable fishery on top of an apparently nonviable one. The result would be that Shark stocks would be quickly exhausted with devastating effects for marine ecosystems including the Tuna, meaning that in only a few years we would end up with no Sharks, no Tuna and even less Fish.
That surely cannot be the solution!

But that's not really the topic here.
I've said it before, everybody here wants the Tuna Industry to survive.
This is a vital component of Fiji's economy and everybody, and this very much including government, should lend a helping hand in assuring that both the local Tuna fishing and Tuna processing sectors can survive in the long term and continue providing for employment and opportunities for many generations to come.
This obviously mandates that the Industry be sustainable but also profitable.

For that to happen, it appears that the fishery needs to be reformed.
I really ignore the details - but if it is really true that Fiji's Tuna Industry is in such dire straights like its spokesman asserts, then the likely reasons could be.

• That Tuna stocks are depleted.
  That is highly likely.
  You may want to re-read this post about the appalling shenanigans that happen within the WCPFC where outsiders like specifically Japan are stalling any efforts to curb quotas in line with the best scientific advice. This year specifically has been particularly depressing as previously reserved regions have been opened to allow the Philippines to further exploit the already ravaged stocks of Bigeyes,
  If those foreign powers continue to interfere and sabotage the attempts to safeguard those precious stocks, Fiji should do what is best for Fiji and set its own targets and rules, very much like the PNA have already done.
  In the end, there is only one long term solution, and that is to fish sustainably, and this very much also by defining the quotas in line with the precautionary principle.
  Interestingly, this is what Mr. Southwick himself appears to be advocating here!

and/or

• That there is Overcapacity.
  There are probably already too many boats fishing for too few Fish and if so, Fiji should reduce the number of fishing licenses that are being awarded and thus increase the profit margin for individual vessels.
  There, I'm principally thinking of the licenses awarded to foreign vessels.
  Their track record is unequivocal: they have already overfished their own stocks, have zero regard for our well being but will instead catch whatever they can get their hands on, and then sail on once our stocks are equally depleted, leaving Fiji to contend with the long-term consequences - or am I to believe that the price of the licenses contains a component for mitigation? I wish!
  I say, Fiji first! If the Asians want to eat Tuna caught in Fiji, let them buy Fijian Tuna caught by Fijian fishermen and exported by Fijian processing plants!
  Did I hear, and what happens to the development aid by those countries, namely Europe, Taiwan and the US to name but a few?
  If they want to assist us by paying for poverty alleviation and development, we are certainly grateful. But to link it to an unsustainable fishery that depletes our national resources and ultimately impoverishes the nation and its population cannot possibly be acceptable, not economically and not ethically - or am I missing something here?
  

and/or

• That the fishery is not profitable.
  If so and if all costs have already been slashed, then the price of Tuna must increase. Canned Tuna is probably too cheap and the time where it was viewed as some kind of junk food must come to an end.
  One smart strategy for convincing customers to pay more, is to have the fishery certified like once again the PNA have already achieved. That of course implies that the fishery is truly sustainable, meaning that bycatch and other ecological impacts will need to be reduced, as already required by, the current MSC environmental standard. Another group, the ISSF is asking its members not to work with vessels that fin Sharks
  In fact, the Fijian Albacore longline fishery is currently being assessed and my hope is that the Industry as a whole will decide to follow that route.
  I say, let's brand our Tuna.
  With Fiji Water having already paved the way and Government facilitating the process, let's establish Fiji Tuna as being Tuna that has been caught sustainably in pristine waters by happy, friendly and fairly compensated fishermen!
  

But the current unsustainable fishing for Sharks must stop.
At best, it is a short term stop-gap measure that is merely detracting from the need to urgently tackle the real issues at hand. But it is of course much more than that: if it continues unchecked, it will lead to the collapse of all fisheries - and this very much including the local fishery for Tuna!

And that's not something anybody can possibly want.
Correct?

PNA - free School Skipjack Fishery certified!

Totally unsustainable - purse seining around FADs.

Bravo PNA - again!
The Parties to the Nauru Agreement are the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu, and this confederation of Tuna fishing countries have long been trailblazers in trying to manage their fishery sustainably.
The MSC certification is a well deserved recognition of those efforts - and what is even more important, it looks like the market loves it!

Free school means FAD-free.
As last posted here, FADs and the so-called Dolphin safe Tuna fishery are an ecological catastrophe and this fishery is finally completely doing away with it - incidentally, very much in spite of the strong objections of ISSF and others that I would generally file under the usual shenanigans, as recently confirmed by the arbitrator.
Coupled with their advocacy against abusing Whale Sharks as FADs, the PNA are truly showing the way forward to many other much bigger and one would think, much more progressive and enlightened countries - much like the small Pacific countries that have enacted the Shark Sanctuaries.
Kudos!

And what about the certification of Fiji's Albacore fishery?
We shall see. I read

Principle 2: Measures are in place to limit bycatch (living creatures caught unintentionally, including other fish species and marine animals such as turtles and dolphins). This could mean changing how fish trimmings are discarded so that seabirds are not drawn towards hazardous fishing gear.

Sharks are certainly other fish species.
As I said, we shall see.