TEARS FOR THE TUNA

Karli Thomas leads efforts to rescue tuna, for the sake of the Pacific Ocean and the people dependent on it.

Last week's meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission ended in a sad day for the tuna, for the whales and whale sharks, and those whose livelihoods depend upon the Pacific Ocean's resources.

Until recently the Pacific was the home to the world's last abundant tuna fisheries, but there are now serious problems facing Pacific tuna. Bigeye and yellowfin tuna are already in serious trouble, and even skipjack, once thought of as virtually limitless, is now in decline and being caught at a rate that is not sustainable in the long term. Wasteful fishing methods are widespread in Pacific fisheries, including the use of fish aggregation devices (FADs) and even setting nets around endangered species like whale sharks and cetaceans. Almost all the money from fishing is being made by foreign countries that send industrial fleets to the region, with little financial return for

Pacific Island countries themselves – just 5-6% of the value of the tuna catch goes to Pacific countries through license fees.

In response to this unsustainable and unfair situation, Pacific Island countries have come forward with a range of proposals to better manage the region's fisheries. These included:

- Closing off areas of international waters to reduce fishing pressure and assist in management and surveillance to stamp out pirate fishing.

- Reducing fishing effort in Pacific Island waters by limiting the number of days that can be fished to reduce the pressure on bigeye, yellowfin and other tuna stocks.

- Banning purse seine fishing around whale sharks and cetaceans, which are targeted as they attract fish, but are sometimes killed in the process.

Unfortunately none of these measures made it past the powerful bloc of fishing nations at the commission. European Union and Korea were opposed to closing additional areas of international waters; and even after photos of a whale shark caught by a purse seiner shamed the room to silence, Japan eventually spoke up demanding to continue this disgraceful practice.

Frozen tuna on a Taiwanese vessel

So where does that leave us, the tuna and the people of the Pacific who depend upon this resource?

The glass half empty version is that once again the vested interests of insatiable industrial fishing fleets have bowed governments into submission and they have blocked vital progress. In a Commission that operates by consensus, it can seem like an impossible task to get every country around the table to support, or at least keep quiet about, an agreement on new conservation and management rules when it is within reach.

The glass half full version is that there is solidarity within the region and a determination to make these fisheries sustainable and fair. The measures above will be unilaterally implemented by a group of eight Pacific Island Countries called the PNA, or 'Parties to the Nauru Agreement'. These countries have the richest tuna resources in the region, making their fishing licenses highly sought after. From the start of next year, all licenses from those eight countries will be issued with these strict conditions, meaning that vessels that sign up to fish in PNA waters agree not to fish in five large areas of the high seas.

The coming year will be crucial to build on Pacific solidarity and ensure these rules are adopted by the Commission when it reviews the conservation and management rules for bigeye and yellowfin tuna at the end of 2011.

This was the precedent-setting agreement reached in 2008 that put two pockets of international waters off limits to all purse seine vessels.
We have done it once, we can do it again!

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EU fishing quotas are about to get a bit more exciting (if that's possible)

Blogpost by Jamie - December 14, 2010 at 16:35 1 comment German agriculture minister Ilse Aigner walks past Greenpeace's trawler in Brussels, Belgium

Every year, it’s the same. Despite evidence and advice from marine biologists that really there aren't plenty more fish in the sea, European fishing quotas are set way above what's required to halt and reverse the downward spiral of many commercial species. As Willie pointed out this time two years ago, it's a pantomime farce which comes along like clockwork in the week before Christmas. But that may be about to change.

Fisheries ministers are meeting right now in Brussels to decide on the fishing quotas for 2011, and what's the betting that it will be another barely-veiled gift to the rapacious demands of the fishing industry? If anyone tries to convince you it's about preserving jobs, don't believe a word of it – employment in the fishing industry has actually gone down. Meanwhile, the size of the vessels and the scale of the catch have ballooned in parallel, the former facilitating the latter.

So it was outside the venue where this year's pantomime was happening that, yesterday, another performance took place. A replica of a fishing trawler was erected beside the EU Council offices in Brussels. It wasn't long before it was summarily decommissioned by our volunteers, demonstrating what needs to happen with much of the EU's bloated fishing capacity.

It's unlikely that the script for the 2011 quota will be significantly different from previous efforts, but there is an opportunity on the horizon which offers the tantalising possibility that a rewrite may soon be possible.
The engine which drives the subsidies and vastly over-muscled fishing fleet – the Common Fisheries Policy (stay awake at the back) - is up for renegotiation in the coming months and there'll be a lot of pressure from the industry to keep things as they are. Those of us who are minded to put sustainability and long-term prosperity for fishing communities before short-term profits for industrial fisheries, will be attempting to shift it the other way, promoting above all a reduction in fishing capacity so that stocks can recover.

Expect to hear much more on this very soon. The CFP figures highly in our plans for 2011 – how to make EU bureaucracy sexy is never easy, but we're going to give it a shot.

In the meantime, as the fisheries ministers leave the quotas meeting and walk past the deconstructed trawler effigy, I'm hoping it's a taste of things to come.