Member-countries of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) will review the ongoing ban on tuna fishing in four areas in the region’s high seas during their ninth regular session at the Philippine International Convention Center on Sunday.
This, as the Philippines’s bid to extend access to these areas beyond February 2013 is put in peril after eight Pacific island-countries insisted that there is a need to close the high seas.
The five-day meeting will discuss measures to conserve fisheries resources in the Western and Central Pacific.
Prof. Glenn Hurry, WCPFC executive director, said the meeting would also look into possible replacement measures for the ban.
The meeting is expected to draw delegates from countries, including Australia, China, Canada, the Cook Islands, the European Union, Fiji, France, Japan, Kiribati, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, South Korea, Taiwan, Tonga, Tuvalu, the US and Vanuatu.
The Philippines is a signatory to the commission.
The WCPFC also includes participating territories like American Samoa, French Polynesia, Guam, New Caledonia, the Northern Mariana Islands, Tokelau, and Wallis and Futuna.
The commission also has Belize, Ecuador, El Salvador, Indonesia, Mexico, North Korea, Panama, Senegal, St. Kitts and Nevis, Thailand and Vietnam as cooperating non-member-countries.
In 2008 the 25-country commission imposed a limited ban on tuna fishing after a steady decline in tuna catch raised alarm in the highly lucrative and competitive world tuna fishing industry.
The following year, the WCPFC expanded its conservation efforts that included a two-year closure of four pockets of high seas in the Pacific Ocean that lie in the path of the highly migratory tuna and tuna-like species.
The ban took effect in 2010, but was extended during the commission’s belated March 2012 meeting.
The WCPFC, however, granted Philippine tuna fishing vessels the exclusive privilege to resume fishing in Pocket 1 after a strong lobby from the Philippine delegation, led by Mindanao Development Authority Lualhati Antonino and Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Director Asis Perez, at Guam early this year.
The exemption, however, is limited to 36 Filipino fishing fleets with gross tonnage not exceeding 250 tons of traditional fresh/ice-chilled catching vessels.
Only eight of 36 fishing vessels that were given the go-signal have set sail to the area.
Pocket 1 is identified as the area of high seas bounded by the exclusive economic zones [EEZs] of Micronesia to the north and east, Palau to the west, and Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to the south.
The Philippines had pushed for access to the area due to increasing fishing pressures in the territorial waters and Philippine EEZ as a result of the closure of the high seas.
Manila noted that the Philippines’s territorial waters and EEZ are important spawning grounds of tunas and tuna-like species.
Joaquin Lu, president of the Socsksargen (South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and General Santos City) Fishing Federation and Allied Industries Inc., said they would monitor the results of this week’s WCPFC meeting and see if the Philippines would remain exempted.
The Philippines is one of the world’s leading tuna catchers, as well as producers of canned and processed tuna products.
General Santos City, the country’s acknowledged tuna capital, is home to six tuna canning plants.
The tuna industry in the port city generates more than $250 million in export revenues, making it the city’s single biggest source of employment and livelihood.
More than 120,000 residents are directly and indirectly dependent on tuna production.
Stop overfishing
IN a statement, the eight-member Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) said it is time for big fishing nations to stop the overfishing of bigeye tuna.
The PNA is sick of foreign fishing nations continually arguing for special exemptions from the rules and for ways they can continue overfishing bigeye tuna, use fish aggregating devices [FADs], access the high seas and generally continue with business as usual, PNA Chairman Nanette Malsol said.
Even though we are small island developing countries, it is the PNA that puts the most time, money and effort into conservation and management of tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. The situation is simply unfair and has to stop, the PNA said.
The eight Pacific island nationsPalau, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati and Tuvalusaid foreign fishing nations need to cut back fishing, limit FADs, respect the closure of high seas and protect whale sharks.
Malsol said the PNA had initiated and supported many WCPFC conservation measures, such as closing areas in the high seas and introducing controls on FADs that can result in catches of juvenile bigeye tuna.
We have gone beyond the WCPFC to introduce higher sustainability standards. We banned setting on whale sharks and we have certification by the Marine Stewardship Council of our skipjack tuna caught without FADs as sustainable, she said.
2012 BusinessMirror