PNA Observers Trained In MSC Chain Of Custody ff

By Atuna.com

Thirteen young people — including the first woman — graduated earlier this month from an intensive fisheries observer course.

This group is the front line for the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) as it attempts to improve and expand management of the purse seine fishing industry.

All purse seiners are now required to have an observer on board while fishing, so there is a big demand for observers. But despite training dozens of observers, the RMI struggles to retain them and currently has only about 25 on staff at the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority. “We needed 100 observers two years ago,” said MIMRA Director Glen Joseph.

With difficulty in keeping observers in the job, MIMRA has changed the format of its training program to conduct a pretraining program to help screen applicants before putting them through a more intensive five-week training that is run by MIMRA, with Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and PNA support.

“Many observers get on a boat and decide it’s not for them, or they make a couple of bucks and quit,” said Joseph.

He said MIMRA is working to raise the profile of observers to attract people who are interested in the oceangoing job as a profession. “It’s a really specialized job,” Joseph noted, adding there is a “growing demand international for fisheries observers.”

Once trained, observers have qualifications to work in any fisheries management organization’s jurisdiction, he said.

MIMRA is looking for young people with college background who like the ocean to get involved as observers.

To boost the program, MIMRA has hired a fulltime observer coordinator, Eldon Claudomar, and has brought in another observer trainer from the Solomon Islands, Bernard Fiubala.

The fact that all of the more than 200 purse seiners fishing in the region are required to have observers on board presents job opportunities for Marshall Islanders, Joseph said. “On occasion, we turn away a vessel because we have no observer,” he said. “It’s a lost opportunity.”

As part of the recently completed training, which included two observers from the Federated States of Micronesia, PNA officials trained the group in the new “Chain Of Custody” requirements to meet the MSC certification standards for skipjack caught on free schools, without the use of fish aggregation devices (FADs). This brings to 42 the number of observers in the Pacific who have been trained in MSC chain of custody courses, with more courses planned to expand the number of observers skilled in this developing area of the fishing industry.

“This can be a career,” Joseph said. “If observers get good experience and excel in their jobs, they will be in demand. And the trainings allow them to work on vessels that fish in different areas such as the eastern and western Pacific oceans. “It’s a good opportunity for our observers,” he added.