Pacific Tuna Ban Won’t Affect Philippine Canneries Muchff

The ban imposed by Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and six other Pacific nations of tuna boats in their international water won’t have much impact on the Philippine tuna industry, an industry expert said last week.

The island nations recently prohibited Philippine fishing boats from a portion of the ocean reportedly the size of Alaska.

The ban on two areas of the Pacific Commons, stretches of international waters surrounded by coastal waters belonging to the Pacific nations, aims to conserve bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks.

Stanley N. Swerdloff, senior fisheries adviser of the Growth with Equity in Mindanao, played down the effect of the ban by the Pacific nations to the country’s tuna industry.

”Its impact to the local tuna industry is small because only a few Philippine vessels are fishing in the international waters of those nations,” he explained.

”Most of the Philippine fishing fleets are licensed to catch in these countries' exclusive economic zones (EZZs), and these are where heavy Philippine fishing expedition has been occurring,” added Swerdloff

Swerdloff also said that Filipino-owned vessels are fishing tuna stocks in international waters close to the Philippines, which is outside the area banned by the Pacific nations.

In a separate interview, Dexter T. Teng, president of the South Cotabato Purse Seiners Association (Socopa), backed the claims of Swerdloff. He said the ban in the portions of Pacific Commons has little impact to country's tuna industry.

Socopa consists of 41 fishing companies that operate group purse seine fishing vessels (carrying capacity is about 20 to 150 gross tons). This group has at least 160 purse seine sets or 1,120 vessels and manned by approximately 10,500 crewmen.

”Traditionally, Filipino fishing boats catch stocks in the EEZs, so the ban on international waters by the Pacific nations will not have much impact to our tuna industry,” said Mr. Teng, also assistant general manager of fishing firm TSP Marine Industries.

Teng said the closure of the international waters straddling the Pacific nations to tuna boats would hit hard Taiwanese and Japanese fishing firms.

The Pacific nations unified to exclude the international waters from tuna fishing operations after the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission failed to come up with regulations during a meeting in December.

”It’s a top priority for the commission to come up with the rules that would govern the tuna stocks in the international waters (within the Pacific Ocean),” Swerdloff said when asked for a time line on the rules’ promulgation.