Kiribati Archives - Saving Seafood

Kiribati moves to open Phoenix Islands Protected Area to fishing, citing lost revenue

November 19, 2021 — The Kiribati government has announced it will open to fishing the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) – a 408,250-square-kilometer marine protected area – after a decline in revenue the island-nation’s government attributed to the creation of the area.

The Kiribati government said an independent advisory panel found that since the creation of PIPA in 2015, demand for its fishing permits has declined 8 percent, costing the country millions in revenue.

The government said the lost revenue has huge implications on future allocations of Kiribati’s vessel day scheme (VDS) share via its participation in the Parties to the Nauru Agreement. For purse-seine fishing, this decline translated to approximately USD 60 million to USD 140 million (EUR 53 million to EUR 123 million) in lost revenue since 2015. For longline fisheries, Kiribati lost out on approximately USD 850,000 (EUR 749,000) annually, or around USD 5.9 million (EUR 5.2 million) since 2015.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

We May Know Less About The Deep Sea Than The Moon. Should It Be Mined?

October 21, 2021 — Much remains unknown about the long-term effects of deep-sea mining in the Pacific and its role in the greater climate crisis. Given that, activists, governments and the private sector support a 10-year moratorium on deep-sea mining.

Yet the Republic of Nauru has made its intentions clear: Within two years, it will start mining the deep sea of the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

The CCZ — between Hawaii and Kiribati, extending eastward towards Mexico — is just one area of interest for mining outfits, covering 4.5 million square kilometers of the Pacific.

The area is filled with seamounts and deep-sea mountains, home to minerals including manganese, cobalt and several other elements integral to batteries that power smartphones and electric vehicles, among other things.

Governments, such as the Cook Islands, along with private mining outfits, are also looking to do exploratory work in their own waters, which has caused concern due to the unknown fallout.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

How sea-level rise could affect Pacific nations’ fishing rights

March 12, 2021 — Small island states in the Pacific are opening a new front in the fight against rising seas, to secure rights to an ocean area bigger than the moon and home to billion-dollar fish stocks.

States from Kiribati to Tuvalu are mapping their most remote islands, scattered across the ocean, in a bid to claim permanent exclusive economic zones (EEZs), stretching 200 nautical miles offshore, irrespective of future sea level rise.

As global warming pushes waters higher, Pacific nations fear some of their islands could be swamped, shrinking their EEZs and rights to fishing and mining within their boundaries – so they are trying to lock in existing zones now.

Read the full story at the Christian Science Monitor

Tuna-Tagging Expedition Sets Sail Despite COVID-19 Challenges

August 24, 2020 — Scientists across the world continue to pursue essential research to the best of current abilities, even as they must also navigate the new COVID-19 landscape. I am part of one of those research efforts: a tuna-tagging cruise that departed from Hawaii last weekend with a track through Kiribati waters.

We left port after overcoming a mountain of logistical odds, under the driving belief that the work of promoting sustainable fisheries and ocean health is worth taking on the seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Half of the world’s tuna catch comes from the Western and Central Pacific, providing a critical source of protein and export revenue for Pacific island nations and others.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

New paper shows evidence of tuna spawning in marine protected areas

August 30, 2019 — New research showed that there is evidence of tuna spawning inside the large marine protected area of the Phoenix Islands in the Pacific nation of Kiribati.

The research conducted by MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution points to evidence that marine protected areas (MPAs) can play a critical role in protecting adult fish, including highly migratory species such as tuna, during spawning.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

When Conservation Backfires

August 29, 2018 — On New Year’s Day 2015, as celebratory fireworks erupted around the world, a quieter but no less explosive change was happening in Kiribati. After years of planning, the central-Pacific nation finally instigated a complete ban on all fishing within a 157,000-square-mile area of ocean, equivalent in size to California. This area—the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA)—had enjoyed limited (and controversial) protections since 2008. But the upgrade of 2015 turned it into one of the biggest protected areas on the planet, and arguably one of the most lauded. Here was a place where some 500 fish species could swim untroubled. Here was a sign of humanity’s growing commitment to protecting the oceans.

But the lead-up to this upgrade was a long one, full of the usual gauntlet of debates, public meeting, and blue-ribbon panels. Those discussions had been going on since at least the fall of 2013—and that gave fishers time to react. By analyzing ship movements, Grant McDermott from the University of Oregon and Kyle Meng from the University of California at Santa Barbara have shown that fishing intensity more than doubled in the site of the future reserve in the run-up to 2015. The damage was equivalent to fishing continuing for another year and a half after the ban took effect. The path to fully protecting PIPA triggered a preemptive race to yank as many fish from its waters as possible before the opportunity to do so closed for good.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

Satellite, cellular technology starting to catch up to IUU scofflaws

November 10, 2016 — Technological advancements in satellite and cellular technology are being brought to bear in the international fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, enabling greater levels of surveillance and policing in the vast – and previously mostly lawless – open ocean.

An article in Business Insider details the story of how the tiny island nation of Kiribati successfully used satellite imaging provided by Global Fishing Watch, a partnership between Google, Oceana and SkyTruth, to catch a commercial fishing vessel fishing illegally in a no-catch zone. Central Pacific Fishing Company, the owner of the vessel, Marshalls 203, was fined USD 2 million (EUR 1.8 million) as a result of the investigation.

Another group that is pushing the envelope when it comes to using tracking technology onboard fishing vessels is Pelagic Data Systems. The company, based in San Francisco, California, has developed a cellular vessel tracking system specifically designed for small-scale fisheries and small-boats, which compose as much as 95 percent of the world’s fishing fleet.

The smaller, solar-powered units that Pelagic Data Systems has designed are much cheaper than an AIS system, and have been successfully implemented on a variety of vessel sizes and types. The units record a geolocation every few seconds, stores it on the vessel after compressing and encrypting it, and uploads data when it comes into contact with a cellular network, according to PDS chief scientific officer Melissa Garren, who presented as part of the SeafoodSource webinar “Small vessels, big data: Silicon Valley takes up the fight against IUU fishing” on Thursday, 20 October.

“The challenge is to put all vessels on the map using a combination of all different sorts of technology,” Garren said. “Whatever it takes to improve fisheries management, the livelihood of fishermen, and the environmental sustainability of our marine resources.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Satellite watchers busted an illegal fishing vessel, and they’re coming for others around the world

November 2, 2016 — The island nation of Kiribati suspected that Marshalls 203 had violated its recently created no-fishing zone, but it didn’t have sufficient proof. That’s where Global Fishing Watch came in.

The non-profit, created by sea conservation group Oceana, environmental satellite imaging non-profit SkyTruth, and Google, identifies fishing boats by analyzing Automatic Identification Signals (AIS). It analyzes the movement of vessels to predict when they are fishing.

In the case of Marshalls 203, it provided unmistakable imagery that showed the boat fishing in the protected zone.

“When we provided this picture and they showed it to the vessel captain, he realized he was busted,” said Jackie Savitz, Oceana’s Vice President of Global Fishing Watch.

Kirbati used this imagery to force the shipping company to pay $2 million last year.

Global Fishing Watch, which features a online tool that anyone can use for free, has some blind spots. Among them, some ships, notably smaller ones, are not required to broadcast AIS data. Also, ships engaged in illegal activity might turn it off.

Sometimes blips in AIS transmission can be used to identify suspicious activity. Savitz pointed out one ship that had dropped off the map while passing through the Galapagos exclusive economic zone — a clear red flag.

Read the full story at Business Insider

Tuna can create ‘true independence’ says Pacific fishing chief

July 14, 2016 — At the Pacific Island Development Forum Leaders Summit Tuesday, the Parties to the Nauru Agreement CEO told the delegates sustainable management of fish was key to self-determination for Pacific peoples.

PNA Chief Executive Officer Transform Aqorau challenged leaders to obtain what he called “true independence” by self determination, indigenous management of ocean resources, South-South cooperation and ending donor dependency. “We must manage our ocean resources to promote self determination and not perpetuate dependency on others. Let us manage our oceans and harness our natural resources to create a sense of self reliance. The PNA has transformed fisheries rights from a market controlled by the others to a market where rights are firmly held in favor of our members,” Aqorau said. The PNA established the Vessel Day Scheme (VDS) where a set number of fishing days are traded and sold. This enables control of tuna supply and increased revenue from tuna fishing. Aqorau gave an example of the benefits from the tiniest player in the PNA member countries – Tokelau, which was only getting $900,000 a year from foreign fishing vessels accessing its waters. Now, as part of the PNA, Tokelau has around $10 million a year in revenue from fisheries. Kiribati for a long time received around $26 million a year and now earns around $200 million per year in revenue.

Read the full story at The Guam Daily Post

PNA Tuna Fishing Nations Agree to Keep Vessel Day Managment Scheme

April 12, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A Pacific fisheries bloc has unanimously decided to maintain a management system that it says has increased revenue to the islands by more than 500 percent in the past six years.

The Parties to the Nauru Agreement’s Vessel Day Scheme allocates its member countries a number of days per vessel that they can allocate to distant water nations which want to purse seine fish for tuna in their waters.

It is seen as a means of increasing returns and ensuring greater sustainabiliity.

Non-island nations are advocating different approaches, including New Zealand, which this week is promoting its catch based management system to Pacific fisheries ministers.

But the PNA members agreed last week to stay with their VDS system after a review by a New Zealand based company called Toroa Strategy Ltd.

It concluded the VDS is a fully functioning fisheries management regime without peer for its class of fishery.

It said there was no clear benefit from changing to a catch scheme now or in the near future.

The New Zealand meetings are part of the Pacific Island’s Roadmap for Sustainable Pacific Fisheries but the strategy company says Pacific leaders have acted precipitately.

It said they were putting the cart before the horse by opting immediately for a catch-based system.

PNA controls waters where 50 percent of the global supply of skipjack tuna is caught.

Its members are Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau.

Tokelau is not a full member, but has joined PNA in enforcing the VDS in its fishery.

After detailing the pros and cons of both effort and quota limit systems, the independent review said there was no evidence the present sustainability performance of the VDS was inferior to the quota management system, given the nature and current state of the tuna fishery.

It said the current total catch level in PNA waters was sustainable and the management system in place works.

The company said the purse seine VDS was a very successful fisheries management regime by any real world standard.

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