The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council concluded its four-day meeting in Honolulu last Thursday to take final action to implement a 100-nautical mile area closure around the Mariana Archipelago for fishing vessels >120-feet in length. The intent is to protect the important commercial and subsistence small-scale tuna troll fisheries in Guam and CNMI.
The Council took final action to provide the US Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and CNMI the authority to use, assign, allocate and manage catch limits of highly migratory fish stocks, or fishing effort limits, established by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) through arrangements with US vessels permitted under the Council’s Pelagic Fishery Ecosystem Plan (PFEP). The Council also established a mechanism whereby the US Territories, for the purposes of responsible fisheries development, may assign up to 1,000 MT of their bigeye allocation to US vessels managed under the Council’s PFEP on an annual basis. These limits will be reviewed on an annually by the Council for purposes of consistency with WCPFC’s tuna conservation and management measures and provisions for small island developing states and participating territories, which include the US Territories.
The Council directed its staff to form a working group with the State of Hawaii to look at the 3-pound minimum size limit for yellowfin and bigeye tuna catches and the impacts of increasing the size limit.
