Tonga Being Affected By Scarcity Of Tunaff

Six tired-looking men aboard the 23-metre Paragon click into action with startling speed as their black vessel slips into Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa.

There they don white plastic aprons and gloves and begin to unload about eight tons of tuna, the increasingly scarce fish popular worldwide for use in anything from sushi to sandwiches, pasta or mornay.

Most of what Paragon has caught is bound for fish markets in Tokyo and Honolulu, but it has to get there fast. Within 24 hours much of this fish will be in Japanese restaurants.

The fishermen hoist the tuna, some weighing up to 80 kilograms, up from freezers at the bottom of the ship and transfer them to land, where they are placed on a stainless steel trolley and taken to a storage area.

In about four hours the tuna is on a plane. A few hours after that it is on a plate.

For a part of the world starved of natural resources, tuna was once seen as the platinum of the Pacific, where a good operator could make a killing selling the fish to wealthy nations in Asia.

But like in many of the world's waters, tuna stocks in the Pacific are under threat, and it is not only the conservationists who are worried. In the past 15 years 20 fishing operations in Tonga have gone bust.

It’s estimated there is about 1.8 million tons of yellowfin tuna in the Pacific now, compared to about 3.7 million tons at natural (unfished) levels. Since 1950 at least 50 million tonnes of tuna and other top-level predators have been removed from the ocean. From a peak in 2001, when more than 2,000 tons of tuna were caught by Tongan ships, the catch fell to just 654 tons in 2004, although numbers have since rebounded a little.

High in omega 3 fatty acids, tuna’s survival in the wild hasn’t been helped by health professionals, who recommend its oily flesh for ailments including high blood pressure, heart disease, depression or eczema.

“Our catch weight has considerably decreased in the past seven or eight years. Considerable meaning over 50%, the fishing is unpredictable now,” says Chin Choe, who owns four boats operating out of Nuku'alofa, including Paragon.

“It is the most difficult high-risk business probably in the whole world. It is very hard. I have been here nine years now. We have had some good days and bad days, but mostly it is bad days now,” he says with a pained look on his face.

It is not only Tonga that is being affected by scarcity of tuna. Across the Pacific, low-value varieties of tuna like albacore and skipjack are still in healthy numbers but the valuable yellowfin and bigeye tuna have been in decline for years.

According to the New Zealand government, half to two thirds of tuna stocks are over-exploited, depleted or recovering in the southeast Atlantic, the southeast Pacific, the northeast Atlantic and the high seas tuna fishing grounds in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

New Zealand recently pledged $NZ5 million for a tuna tagging program, so scientists can make better stock assessments.

In the Mediterranean and east Atlantic it is thought only about 6% of the original stock levels of bluefin tuna remain.

This month the director of the US fisheries service called for a ban on bluefin tuna fishing for up to five years in and near the Mediterranean, to allow stocks to recover.

Pacific leaders were concerned enough about tuna numbers in their waters to recently sign a declaration on fishing at their annual forum. Known as the Vava’u Declaration, it spells out steps they will take to try to protect fishing stocks.

”We solemnly commit ourselves and our governments to the conservation and sustainable management of highly migratory tuna resources,” the 16 nations, including New Zealand, agreed.

The words are admirable, but they will be tough to implement.

Getting the Pacific nations to cut down on fishing is almost akin to asking Australia to reduce mining or telling the Middle East to cut back on oil sales. Along with tourism, fisheries are the economic mainstays of the Pacific, with tuna fishing worth an estimated $US2 billion a year to often fragile economies. In a part of the world where agricultural land is scarce, it is also a resource people depend on, with fish making up 70-90% of total animal protein levels in local diets.

Tuna have no respect for national boundaries or exclusive economic zones either. If sailors from any country flout restrictions, all are affected.

Even nations far from the Pacific play their part in the tuna’s demise, with fishermen from Europe, China and Japan raiding the ocean's stocks.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission was set up in 2004 to try to overcome these problems.

Based in Federated States of Micronesia, it has 25 member countries, including the European Union, China, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and most of the Pacific nations. Working through fishery departments in member states, it is supposed to monitor and regulates catches.

The organization provides a more global approach to fish stocks, but can’t monitor pirate fishing where unregistered boats catch tuna and sell it on without heed to the rules on fish size, weight and allowable catch.

Even if every nation played its part in reducing the tuna catch, fewer tuna may be available due to the effects of global warming, that changes ocean currents and alters fish migration routes.

Despite the implementation problems, the nations that signed the Vava’u Declaration really had no choice. If they don’t act soon, the bigeye and yellowfin stocks in the Pacific will be devastated, leaving the countries in a perilous situation.

Solomon Islands Foreign Affairs Minister Patteson Oti was sounding desperate when he made a speech at the Pacific Islands Forum. “Two of the key target tuna species are now on the verge of becoming overfished. The current level of fishing effort on bigeye and yellowfin is considered to be unsustainable,” he said.

His sentiments are echoed by Su’a Tanielu, director general of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA).”If we continue with the current level of fishing of course they will be overfished. So in terms of timeframes I can’t be exact. Possibly less than decades. Possibly less than 10 years,” Tanielu said.

Australia has recently pledged $500,000 to strengthen regional monitoring and surveillance of Pacific fisheries, and said catches must be reduced by 25% for bigeye tuna and 10% for yellowfin.

The money hasn’t yet helped Jimmy Chow, 42, who owns three tuna fishing boats in Tonga. He only gets about $US3 ($NZ3.94) per kilogram for his premium tuna these days, and says he is worried about declining tuna stocks. “About 10 years ago in one day they can catch a lot but now hardly you can catch the big ones,” he says. “There must be some fish down there I reckon (but) there are less and less.”

Not everyone thinks Pacific tuna stocks are facing a crash.

John Hampton, from the Oceanic Fisheries Program at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, based in New Caledonia, says the general public is often needlessly alarmed at figures showing a dive in the number of tuna compared to natural levels. Hampton says for fisheries to operate some stock depletion must be accepted and tuna can still be sustainably caught if their numbers are kept a little below half of their unexploited levels.

Hampton acknowledges though that overfishing is probably occurring for some species. “Bigeye and yellowfin are right on the borderline at the moment of the level that can be sustained,” he says.

The Greenpeace environmental organization has been sounding alarm bells over tuna fishing for some time.

Mike Hagler, from Greenpeace New Zealand, says tuna stocks in the Pacific are at risk of collapsing. “We are gravely concerned. All the advice we have is that in particular yellowfin and bigeye tuna are in serious trouble,” he says.

”Not a lot is known about illegal fishing, but it could be a large portion of the catch.When you add all this with climate change you are looking at a major crisis.”

Source: AAP