Pacific Tuna fisheries To Be Monitored By GPSff

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, among other major tuna fishers, have decided to begin using the global positioning system from next January to keep an eye on fishing boats trolling for tuna in the central and western Pacific Ocean, an area rich in yellowfin and bigeye tuna.

The envisioned surveillance would help to significantly tighten control over tuna resources, a measure whose implementation lags behind that of other fishing areas.

For the time being, about 200 circle hook-equipped longline fishing boats -including 35 Japanese fishing boats- which can catch entire schools of tuna with large nets, will be required to install GPS devices.

The relevant countries and territories will join forces to develop as soon as possible a system capable of focusing on cruising data, with Japan footing about 25 percent of the development cost.

Fishermen catching tuna in the exclusive economic zones of foreign countries are required to pay fishing fees. As such, some fishing boats falsely report fishing in international waters -the deep-sea areas beyond the economic rights boundaries of a country- thereby making it difficult to keep tabs on tuna catches, a prerequisite for setting fishing quotas by country and getting the countries to comply with them.

Japan, which is calling for effective resource management in this particular fishing area, plans to play an active role in developing the system to ensure long-term stock stability.

Of the five regional fisheries frameworks, three -including the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission- have either already introduced a monitoring system or plan to do so this year.

The Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna is considering following suit next January.

Although international arrangements for the conservation and management of such high-quality tuna species as bluefin and southern bluefin have been effective, measures for conserving comparatively low-priced bigeye and yellowfin tuna have been insufficient at the international level.

This is mostly because bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks are more abundant than those of higher quality tuna.

Japan’s average annual catch of bigeye tuna, often sold as sashimi at supermarkets and popular for its relatively cheap price, in the central and western Pacific was 35,000 tons for the 2001-04 period.

In the early 1950s, the global tuna catch was less than 500,000 tons. By 2005, it has surpassed 4.2 million tons.