May 29, 2020 — Pacific Fisheries officials, on 21 May, extended a suspension of 100 percent observer coverage requirements on all purse-seiners fishing in the waters of member-nations to 31 July.
The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), in a circular memo, endorsed the extension of the measure, stating that the “temporary suspension will apply to new trips after a vessel operator has met any requirement for repatriation of observers currently onboard a vessel.”
December 16, 2019 — Despite an agreement on a resolution addressing climate change’s impact on the fisheries it regulates, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) failed to tackle several key issues at its annual meeting, which took place in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, last week.
In its most notable move during the meeting, the commission adopted a climate change resolution introduced by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries (FFA) that acknowledges the need to address the impact of climate change on fisheries. The resolution requires the commission to consider climate change when developing conservation and management measures, and to support more science on the impact to fisheries.
December 12, 2019 — Pacific bigeye, yellowfin, albacore, and skipjack tuna are all reported to be in healthy condition, according to a 2018 stock assessment announced this week during the 16th Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
The Pacific Community’s (SPC) stock assessment report stated that the estimate of the total tuna catch in the WCPFC Convention Area for 2018 is 2,790,859 metric tons (MT), which represents 81 percent of the total Pacific Ocean catch of 3,443,174 MT, and 54 percent of the global tuna catch, which was 5,172,543 MT.
December 9, 2019 — Pacific fisheries officials are calling on members of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) to band together and commit to an action plan that takes climate change’s impacts on its fisheries into account.
In a statement ahead of the week-long tuna commission meeting – taking place in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, between 5 and 11 December – the 17-member Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) are “therefore calling on the WCPFC to collectively take stronger action on climate change.”
December 5, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Researchers are calling for the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission to better address its fisheries management challenges.
The commission – responsible for managing the vast ocean waters – meets in Papua New Guinea this week.
The Pew Charitable Trust has said due to the high volume of fishing vessels, trans-shipment (transfer of catch between fishing and carrier vessels) and port activities in the region, the Commission had been unable to increase its observer coverage.
The Trust said the commission needed to strengthen oversight of fishing vessels at sea, and in port, and modernise management for long-term sustainability.
Jamie Gibbon, of the Trusts’ international fishing team, wrote in an article for Pew that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing was a major threat to the sustainability and profitability of the world’s fisheries.
He said sound fisheries control also required clear rules regarding how much fish could be caught and with what gear.
Mr Gibbon said that would help fishing levels become sustainable.
To achieve that, the commission should strengthen port controls, increase observer coverage and improve monitoring of trans-shipment.
The commission also needed to advance harvest strategies and protect the sharks, mantas and mobula rays.
Meanwhile, Fisheries Minister Semi Koroilavesau will lead the Fiji delegation at the meeting and said he would discuss crew policies to ensure Fijian nationals were protected on local and foreign fishing vessels.
He said the supply of tuna from several of its neighbours would also be high on the agenda for Fiji at the meeting.
“I think PNG, Solomons and Vanuatu would be ready to discuss the details of it. We have been working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the last year in trying to achieve this.”
Mr Koroilavesau said Fiji would also push for a quota system given the number of foreign fleets on the high seas.
That, he said, would protect smaller and developing Pacific states.
Mr Koroilavesau urged Pacific governments to improve control over their fisheries to protect their value.
The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission meeting starts on Thursday in Port Moresby.
This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
November 8, 2019 — Some of the world’s biggest tuna fishing fleets are set to meet “face to face” next week to discuss the current market crisis.
An oversupply of skipjack tuna has led raw material prices for delivery in Bangkok, Thailand to dive from $1,600 per metric ton in March to $900/t this month, a record low. This has caused many purse seine boats around the world to operate at a loss. Prices are expected to drop even further in the near future -with rumours of some exchanges done at $850/t in recent days- a situation that is seen as unsustainable for most tuna fleets.
The World Tuna Purse Seine Organization (WTPO) will hold a meeting on Nov. 13 in Manila, the Philippines, to discuss the market and catch situations in relation to “concerns” raised by WCPO and Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission members.
October 28, 2019 — “The long-term survivability of the cannery is a key motivation for the positions that we take” during “difficult negotiation” for fishing days at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC).
This is according to NOAA fisheries deputy assistant for regulatory programs, Samuel Rauch III, who served in the last two years as one of the commissioners for the US government on the WCPFC, during a news briefing with local reporters on Tuesday, following the opening of the 180th Meeting of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council at the Gov. Tauese P.F. Sunia Ocean Center.
In his remarks at the opening of the meeting, Lt. Gov. Lemanu Palepoi Sialega Mauga pointed to the critical issue — that NOAA reconsider its decision to close off fishing by the US purse seiner fleet in the US-EEZ and on the high seas — referred to as Effort Limit Area for Purse Seine (ELAPS) — for the rest of calendar year 2019, effective Oct. 9th.
Lemanu reminded the Council that the closure “will affect our fish cannery, and have a major negative economic impact on our tuna-dependent American Samoa.”
October 10, 2019 — In recent years, concern has been growing about bycatch of juvenile bigeye tuna by purse-seiners setting nets on drifting fish aggregation devices (dFADs). The main target of the purse-seiners is the more plentiful skipjack tuna, but as bigeye inhabit the same tropical seas, they are often taken as well.
The devices typically consist of a raft or buoy trailing a length of disused netting tied into the shape of a string of sausages, used to attract tuna – which like to gather under floating objects. Modern dFADs are equipped with a solar-powered GPS device and a fish finder to report their location and the amount of fish gathered under them. Support vessels manage the deployment and retrieval of the dFADs, so that fishing vessels can concentrate on fishing.
September 20, 2019 — Vessel location data suggests that more than 1,500 transfers of fish catch may have occurred on the high seas in the western and central Pacific Ocean in 2016 – far more than the 1,000 transshipments that were actually reported.
Another 700 or more transfers, called transshipments, may have taken place in national waters in the region.
September 16, 2019 — The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s (WCPFC’s) management of transshipments in its waters is compromised by significant gaps in reporting, monitoring and data sharing, according to a report released by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Transshipment is the transfer of fish from the vessel that caught the fish to a carrier vessel that will deliver the fish to port, an activity that often takes place on the high seas and outside the view and reach of authorities. The practice allows unscrupulous fishing vessel operators to obscure or falsify data on their fishing practices. This contributes to millions of dollars of illegally caught fish entering the seafood supply chain each year.
The Pew Charitable Trusts combined commercially available Automatic Identification System data with the application of machine learning technology to analyze the track histories of carrier vessels operating in WCPFC convention area waters in 2016. Researchers then compared this analysis with publicly available information on transshipments and carrier vessels.