Source: Radio Australia
Talks to map out a new tuna conservation regime for the Western Pacific collapsed in Guam last Friday.
The negotiations between Pacific Islands nations and the United States, Europe, China, Japan and others - failed to find common ground on many issues. However they did decide to give a limited amount of tuna vessels of Philippines permission to fish in two of the high sea pockets
At stake was the future of over 50 percent of the world’s tuna.
The 8 tuna-rich Pacific countries had put the fishing nations on notice that they want action to halt the decline in fish stocks, Pacific Beat spoke to Adam Baske from the Pew Environment group who’s back in the United States after the failed meeting in Guam.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Adam Baske from the Pew Environment group
BASKE: This meeting everybody knew it was coming, it was actually supposed to be in December and got postponed until March, so everybody knew what people were coming to the table with and still it seemed like there was really a lack of understanding between the distant water fishing nations and the Pacific Islanders. And it was really unfortunate to see that there was just enough time in the week to get the issues resolved.
COUTTS: Can we get to some of the specifics of the sticking points? We know in the past that there’ve been sensitive discussions with the US and the distant water fishing nations with the Pacific nations wanting a better deal out of the US than they had previously experienced. Was that one of the sticking points?
Well that issue is more about a treaty they have between the Pacific Islands and the US, and that while it wasn’t an issue up for discussion this past week, I think it did underlie the positioning we’re seeing around the room. But what we saw was that the Pacific Islanders were pushing for stronger conservation, they want to end over-fishing for big-eye, one of the major stocks in the Pacific. They wanted to reduce the use of fish aggregating devices and limit long-line catching, all which seems like a reasonable way forward, and there was just too much reluctance from I’d say the distant water fleets to really compromise, which was unfortunate.
And was that the division, the Pacific Island nations on one side and the distant water fishing nations on the other?
Well it wasn’t as clear cut as that. There was actually a lot of willingness from the Asian fleets in particular to reduce their amount of FAD fishing, that was the first time I’ve heard that and I was actually pleasantly surprised to hear it, and they actually committed to doing that regardless if the measure passed or not. So hopefully we’ll see a reduction in FAD use and the associated problems, like the catch of juvenile tuna, bell fish and sharks that goes along with that. But I don’t think the US and the EU are willing to reduce their FAD use, even though there is clear advice from the science that that’s what's needed to be done. So again, disappointing.
Well what does that say about the quotas that the Pacific has introduced across its various EEZs?
Luckily those stay in place and they don’t actually have hard quotas, they have an amount of what they call vessel days, so each Pacific Island zone they’re allocated a certain number of days that they can sell off in their bilateral access agreements. And luckily those efforts aren’t limited or decided by WCPFC, that’s something the Pacific Islands have taken upon themselves to manage that system, and they did show really strong leadership and that system will stay in place.
Now the talks collapsed effectively and came to nothing, but have they at least agreed to come back to the negotiating table sometime soon?
They have and so what they agreed upon was what they call a ceasefire, an interim measure that’s going to be in effect till February next year, which basically continues the management measures that are in place now, such as a three-month ban on FAD use, and 100 percent observer coverage on the purse seine fleets and a couple of other things, but it was weakened and now the Philippines are actually going to be allowed to fish in an area of the high seas, called the high seas pocket, that were not previously open to fishing. So that one step backwards, another step backwards was that the Chinese will actually get a boost in their long-line quota of big-eye tuna. So both of those could increase the effort, could increase the fishing on an already stressed fishery. So hopefully next year, they’re going to meet again in December in the Philippines, hopefully with a little more willingness to compromise.
How did it come about that the Chinese were able to get in on the big-eye tuna fishing when already there are accusations that it’s unsustainable at the moment?
Your guess is as good as mine on that one and I think it is just part of the nature of these discussions as they broke down, and if the Chinese were going to agree to anything they had to have that amount of catch allocated to them, or else I don't know would have even have got an interim measure. So it’s definitely not been a positive step, but hopefully it can be addressed more thoroughly in December, and actually in the lead-up to it. The hard work happens in the months leading up to the meetings because at these negotiations there really isn’t time, these agendas are so packed with other substantial issues. I mean the tuna measure wasn't the only thing on the table, they were talking about observer programs and vessel monitoring systems and albacore fisheries and sword fish fisheries and shark measures and whale sharks. So with that much that needs to be discussed and agreed upon, the more work that can be done ahead of time the better, and it just didn’t seem like there was that much work ahead of time on this one.
Alright well there’s good and bad when it came to the sharks, the conservation measures for sharks, but Australia knocked back the proposal about whale sharks?
Yes that was really unfortunate; whale sharks are gentle giants of the ocean. Unfortunately did not get protected at this meeting, still if you’re a purse seine fisherman and you see a whale shark swimming around and you think it has tuna underneath it, you can still put your nets around it and get the tuna underneath it and whether or not that whale shark survives is questionable. We had data to show whale sharks were vulnerable to this kind of activity, and it basically came down to one party saying no, we’re not going to accept that, with really no reasoning at all. So even though they say this is not a consensus body, the WCPFC, definitely acted like it in this regard.