December 9th, 2016 — Conservation and management measures for depleted tuna stocks in the Pacific have polarised the membership of the Pacific Tuna Commission.
The annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, which brings together Pacific countries and distant water fishing nations, has been going all this week in Nadi, Fiji.
Its executive director Feleti Teo said it was proving extremely difficult to reach a consensus on protecting depleted tuna stocks.
For bigeye tuna the main contention is between longliners, which target adult bigeye tuna, and purse seiners which catch juvenile bigeye tuna, that tend to school with their target species skipjack tuna.
This is particularly so when purse seiners set their nets around fish aggregating devices.
Longliners have set catch limits but Feleti Teo says there have been assertions that some countries have not been adhering to them.
Management of the impact of purse seiners on Bigeye is done by banning them from fishing on FADs for several months a year but the effectiveness of this practice is disputed and any increase on banned months has been rejected by small island countries.