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Researchers and Feds to Address Quality of Science Used to Manage US Pacific Island Fisheries

October 10, 2019 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:

Scientists from throughout the Pacific region will meet Oct. 15 to 17, 2019, in Honolulu to address the quality of the data used to manage federal fisheries and other topics. The Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council will convene 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1164 Bishop St., Suite 1400. The meeting is open to the public.

The lack of sufficient data to manage fisheries has been a continued concern, especially in the US Territories of American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Federal law requires that annual catch limits (ACLs) be set for each federally managed fish species. Typically, limits are based on stock assessments, but these are lacking for most of the hundreds of coral reef species caught in the islands.

In 2018, based on the Council’s recommendation, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) reduced the number of species requiring ACLs from 205 species or families to 11 in American Samoa, from 227 species or families to 13 in the Mariana Archipelago (Guam and the CNMI) and from 173 species or families to 20 in the Hawai’i Archipelago. The species no longer requiring ACLs are now considered “ecosystem components.” They are being monitored until additional information is available to assess their stock status. By reducing the current need for ACLs to dozens of species, scientists and managers are able to allocate more resources to improving the datasets for those species without stock assessments.

One such effort is a recent review organized by the Council and NMFS on the quality, relevance and performance of the data collection systems in the US Pacific Territories. At the SSC meeting, the co-chairs of the review will report on the recommendations from that week-long effort by a panel of experts in the field. Key among these is the need to collect total catch and effort from fisheries targeting the key species by requiring mandatory reporting from fishers and vendors rather than relying on creel surveys. This recommendation is in line with actions taken by the three governments of the three US Territories to improve available information by instituting or considering mandatory permit and reporting requirements.

Another effort is the ongoing Council-sponsored biosampling studies on O’ahu and Maui by Poseidon Fisheries Research (PFR). From July 2018 to July 2019, PFR measured and weighed 10,256 fish on O’ahu, comprising 69 different “ecosystem component” species and 14 families. On Maui, as of August 2019, PFR measured 407 fish and worked with the marine biology class at Kamehameha Schools on that island to sample 91 fish from five species for life history information, e.g., sex, reproduction, size and age. Due to these efforts, the first life history article on palani (ringtail surgeonfish) and pualu (eyestripe surgeonfish) will be published in a journal.

Other items on the SSC agenda

The NMFS Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center’s new stock assessment for the federally managed bottomfish species in American Samoa, Guam and CNMI shows a pessimistic stock status for American Samoa and Guam. The SSC will review the assessment and the Western Pacific Stock Assessment Review panel’s report on it and decide whether this new assessment constitutes the best scientific information available for fishery management decisions.
The SSC will review and consider the implications of a new model for loggerhead and leatherback turtle interactions in the Hawai’i shallow-set longline fishery for swordfish.
The SSC will review and may make recommendations regarding the stock status ofoceanic whitetip sharks (a species listed under the Endangered Species Act) and blue marlin.

Recommendations made by the SSC on these and other matters will be considered by the Council when it meets Oct. 22 to 24, 2019, at the Tauese P. F. Sunia Ocean Center in Utulei, American Samoa. For agendas and briefing documents for the SSC, Council and related advisory body meetings, go to http://www.wpcouncil.org/public-meetings/ or contact the Council at info@wpcouncil.org or call (808) 522-8220.

Fishermen Identify Projects to Improve Fisheries Development in the U.S. Pacific Islands

March 20, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Projects to develop fisheries topped the list of needs identified by fishermen from Hawai’i, American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands during their March 15 and 16 meeting in Honolulu. The group, which constitutes the Advisory Panel of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, also highlighted the importance of fishing to the communities of each of the island areas.

Advisory panel members said the social and economic value of the local and regional fisheries also needs to better communicated.

“The Council welcomes the ideas and contributions of the Advisory Panel,” Council Chair Archie Soliai said in a press release. “This is a challenging time for fisheries, and the AP has a lot of work to do.”

The Council will consider the AP recommendations when it meets this weaek at the YWCA Fuller Hall in Honolulu.

Some of the suggested projects and activities from the AP include:

fishery demonstration projects;
expanded use of technology to collect fishery data;
characterization of existing fisheries in Hawai’i; and
improved fishing opportunities in Guam and the CNMI through improved fish aggregation devices, fishery access and reduction of shark depredation.

AP members include representatives from diverse fisheries, such as spearfish, longline, bottomfish, charter boat, subsistence and the fishery media. The AP is mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Council said in the release.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Feds to Reopen Papahanaumokuakea to Fishing?

March 27, 2017 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Management Council:

The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council concluded its three-day meeting in Honolulu with a suite of recommendations, many of which are focused on keeping U.S. fishing grounds open to sustainably managed U.S. fisheries.

The council includes the local fishery department directors from Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam and the CNMI, fishing experts appointed by the Governors and federal agencies involved in fishing-related activities.

Marine national monuments, national marine sanctuaries, other marine protected area designations and Department of Defense training are among the uses that are increasingly closing off fishing grounds in U.S. waters.

Council Chair Edwin A. Ebisui Jr. clarified that council communications to the administration about impacts of marine national monuments on fisheries are not lobbying.

Some environmental activists recently made misleading statements about this in regards to a letter to President Trump prepared on March 1, 2017, by the Council Coordination Committee or CCC. The CCC includes the chairs of the nation’s eight regional fishery management councils. The letter details the impact of designations of Marine National Monuments under the Antiquities Act in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and was submitted to the president after conferring with the NOAA Office of General Counsel.

Read the full story at The Hawai’i Free Press

Western Pacific Council to Tackle Management in Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument

March 23, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — At this week’s Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council in Honolulu, members are developing new fishing rules for the marine national monument that was expanded last year and decided which species will be under federal management as components of the area’s ecosystem.

The Presidential proclamation under the Antiquities Act that expanded the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument calls for closing offshore commercial fisheries from 50 to 200 miles around the NWHI, an area twice the size of Texas. The Council includes the local fishery department directors from Hawai’i, American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), fishing experts appointed by the Governors and federal agencies involved in fishing-related activities. The meeting runs through tomorrow and is open to the public.

The Hawai’i-based longline fleet is expected to redirect its fishing efforts to the high seas (beyond 200 miles from shore) or into the allowable longline fishing area 50 to 200 miles offshore around the main Hawaiian Islands. The Hawai’i longline fleet, which catches bigeye tuna and swordfish, is banned from 0 to 50 miles throughout Hawai’i.

While the Presidential proclamation bans commercial fishing around the NWHI, it allows regulated non-commercial and Native Hawaiian subsistence fishing.

This week the Council is considering the results of public scoping meetings that were conducted throughout Hawai’i in December as well as the recommendations of its advisory bodies.

The Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), which met March 7 to 9 in Honolulu, recommends that existing data, such as data from the former sport-fishing operation at Midway Atoll in the NWHI and the Hawaii tuna tagging project, be explored.

The SSC also recommends that potential impact on protected species be considered as fishing effort is redistributed.

The Council advisory bodies jointly support the removal of fishing provisions in the NWHI as well as other marine monuments in the region: Rose Atoll (American Samoa), Marianas Trench (CNMI) and Pacific Remote Islands (the US atoll and island possessions of Johnston, Palmyra, Wake, Baker, Howland, Jarvis and Kingman Reef). The group recommends that the Council continue to express its concerns to the new Administration regarding the impacts to fisheries from the monument designations and their expansions as well from military closures and other marine protected areas in the region.

In addition to management of the monument, the Council will determine which of the thousands of marine species in the region will be managed using annual catch limits as targeted fish species, and which will be managed using other tools (for example, minimum sizes and seasonal closures) as ecosystem component species. The Council may endorse the SSC recommendation to form an expert working group to ensure the final listings take into account species of social, cultural, economic, biological and ecological importance.

As part of the Council meeting, a Fishers Forum on Using Fishers Knowledge to Inform Fisheries Management will be held 6 to 9 p.m. on March 22 at the Ala Moana Hotel, Hibiscus Ballroom. The event includes informational booths, panel presentations and public discussion.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

HAWAII: Longliners Have Nearly Pulled In Their 2016 Limit Of Bigeye Tuna

July 14, 2016 — Hawaii’s longline fleet is about to hit its 3,554-ton limit for bigeye tuna in the Western and Central Pacific, prompting a closure date for the fishery of July 22, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The longliners had caught an estimated 98 percent of their annual quota by Wednesday, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service reported. The feds had been predicting longliners would hit their bigeye tuna limit by Aug. 14.

But the closure will likely be short-lived thanks to a federal rule that proposes, like in years past, allowing U.S. Pacific Island territories — American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands — to each allocate up to 1,000 tons of their 2,000-ton quotas to U.S. longliners under a “specified fishing agreement.”

In April, the Hawaii Longline Association reached such an agreement with the Marianas that involves paying the territory $250,000 in each of the next three years for up to half of its quota. That’s $50,000 more than the association paid the territory last year.

The money is deposited into the Western Pacific Sustainable Fisheries Fund, which the territories use for fishery development projects approved by their respective governors, according to Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council spokeswoman Sylvia Spalding. These includes boat ramps, fish markets, processing facilities, training programs and loan programs.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

CNMI Gov: No To Expansion Of Hawaii Marine Monument

May 11, 2016 — SAIPAN, CNMI — Governor Ralph Torres does not support the expansion of the marine national monument in Hawaii, citing the CNMI’s disappointing experience with the Marianas Trench monument.

The governor in an interview on Tuesday said he wrote to President Obama to raise some concerns regarding the proposed expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in Hawaii also known as the Northwestern Hawaiian monument.

“I don’t think I’m supporting it,” he said. “What we were offered here [for the Marianas monument] was not the one given to us. The proponents mentioned hundreds of millions of dollars and many jobs, but none of those have occurred.”

Read the full story at the Pacific Islands Report

CNMI, Hawaii Longliners Agree On Sharing Tuna Quota

April 20, 2016 — Senate Vice President Arnold I. Palacios says the CNMI and the Hawaii Longline Association have finalized a deal regarding the tuna-catch limit.

Palacios was with Gov. Ralph Torres who visited Hawaii to meet its governor and officials of the Hawaii Longline Association who, the senator said, agreed to an annual payment of $250,000 for three years.

Palacios said the deal had been on hold for six months.

Read the full story at the Pacific Islands Report

Hawaii’s Tuna Longliners Offer to Buy Additional Quota from Northern Mariana Islands

April 14, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said Monday he wants to “get as much as we can” from a proposed deal by Hawaii longliners to buy half of the CNMI’s tuna fishing quota for a couple of hundred thousand dollars per year, allowing them to fish past their annual catch limits if exhausted.

The Hawaii Longline Association wrote to Torres in February and offered a three-year deal—with $200,000 paid out each year—to allow their fishing vessels to catch up to 1,000 metric tons of bigeye tuna “against the CNMI catch limit,” Saipan Tribune learned. The offer is made on the expectation that Hawaii longliners would exhaust their own catch quota, and similar agreements with the CNMI have been made in the last several years.

The offered payment is not tied down to whether the longliners actually end up using the CNMI quota, Saipan Tribune learned, and the $200,000 would be paid without regard the amount of catch HLA has in any given year.

“I am trying to get as much as we can,” Torres said on Monday, “by meeting with our stakeholders in Hawaii and utilizing what we have here and seeing what we gave last year and what are giving up in the years coming.” Torres will be in Hawaii for three days and flew out yesterday.

Asked if he has received any information whether the offer was a “lowball,” Torres said the CNMI’s neighboring islands asked for $1 million “and that was shot down right away.”

“As much as we want a million dollars we will get as much as we can” so “that the industry continue to grow,” Torres said.

Still, an industry source from a neighboring island said the $200,000 price was “not enough.”

Using their formula to calculate market value of tons per yen or dollar, the source estimated a market value for the CNMI’s 1,000 metric tons at between $887,280 to $1.2 million.

The CNMI is allotted 1,000 metric tons for big eye tuna as part of regulations in for fishing in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean as managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

Office of the Governor spokesman Ivan Blanco earlier said that the CNMI is “actively reviewing available options including comparable market values from nearby island countries before an acceptance of the offer will be made.”

Department of Lands and Natural Resource Secretary Richard Seman, for his part, said they always do and hope for money but at the same time, “we want to be reasonable and extend our assistance to the Hawaii Longline Fishery Association who had been cut short by the overall international” regulations.

Asked if he thought the offer was market value or “a fair price,” Seman said it was not so much market value as “it is not based on what they catch.”

“They are just assuming that they catch that amount of quota. If they don’t catch anything, it is their loss,” he told reporters Monday.

Seman said the United States has been in the “forefront of compliance” under the rules that Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission has set up but it was “sad that [the U.S.] gets kind of shortchanged at the end of the day when it comes down to allocation” of fishing quota.

Seman said U.S. longliners are now using “its own territories’ quota” but added they are not going out and seeking other national quotas as compared to other longliners from China who are buying out some of Japan’s quota.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Proceeds from NMI’s fishing quota will go to conservation

October 16, 2015 — The $525,000 that the CNMI earns from selling half of its big eye tuna quota will go to marine conservation programs and development of fishery management, Variety learned.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service or NMFS gave the CNMI a 2,000 metric ton catch limit for big eye tuna for the year 2015, and allowed the commonwealth to sell half of it to a group of long-line fishermen in Hawaii.

NMFS allowed the CNMI to allocate a 1,000-metric ton catch limit to Hawaii long-liners in a specified fishing agreement.

In his email to CNMI Department of Lands and Natural Resources Secretary Richard B. Seman, NMFS Regional Administrator Michael D. Tosatto said: “As an accountability measure, NMFS will monitor, attribute, and restrict (if necessary) catches of longline-caught bigeye tuna, including catches made under a specified fishing agreement. These catch limits and accountability measures support the long-term sustainability of fishery resources of the U.S. Pacific Islands.”

In his Oct. 9 letter to Gov. Eloy S. Inos. Tosatto said he has reviewed the agreement between the CNMI government and Quota Management Inc. and determined that it is consistent with the requirements of the Fishery Ecosystem Plan for Pelagic Fisheries and the Western Pacific, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and other applicable laws.

Read the full story from Marianas Variety