Urgent Measures Needed To Protect Pacific Tuna

Urgent Measures Needed To Protect Pacific Tuna - Greenpeace

Auckland, September 30, 2010 - Greenpeace is supporting tough new rules to regulate industrial tuna fishing in the Pacific Ocean and is advocating for the closure of four areas of international waters to all fishing.

It says Pacific tuna fisheries are in jeopardy of being overfished and that measures such as the closure of the four areas of international waters are vital to ensure the sustainability of what was considered to be the last relatively healthy tuna fishery in the world.

These issues are being discussed by the body responsible for managing the western Pacific region’s tuna resource – the Technical and Compliance Committee (TCC) meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) in Pohnphei, Federated States of Micronesia, which starts today.

A number of Pacific Island countries, along with Australia, are calling for the closure of four areas of international water to all fishing by the end of 2010. (1) There is also a call to ban fish aggregation devices (FADs), which act like a magnet to fish, in purse seine fishing.

Greenpeace New Zealand Ocean campaigner Karli Thomas, who is at this meeting, says New Zealand must support these moves.

“It’s a David and Goliath battle between the small Pacific nations and industrial fishing fleets. New Zealand can help even up the odds by supporting our neighbours to stop overfishing of the Pacific tuna fishery.

“Some Pacific tuna stocks are in serious trouble already - last year scientists advised that fishing pressure needed to be cut by up to half to allow bigeye tuna to recover from overfishing. Fishing with deadly FADs is a major cause of this decline along with pirate fishing and the overcapacity of fishing fleets.” (2)

Yesterday Greenpeace released a report which shows more than half of the Taiwanese vessels operating in Pacific waters are evading their own national laws by reflagging to another country usually one of the Pacific islands, a practice known as flag of convenience (FOC). (3) This gives them the fishing and access rights of the flagged state.

The report also documents 16 cases of pirate fishing linked to Taiwan industry in 2009 and 2010. Taiwan is a member of the WCPFC.

“The bloated Taiwanese fleet operates predominantly in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean and has a history of being involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) or pirate fishing activities,” says Thomas.

“Commission members, including the Pacific Island countries, are obligated to implement tougher regulations to address the urgent situation by keeping a close tab on the number of fishing vessels that its local registered industry are authorised to operate. As an urgent action Pacific states must move away from being used as flag of convenience states.

“The rogue fleets that avoid regulations engage in pirate fishing and wasteful fishing practices should be the first to be booted from the region. It’s also time that the big contributors to destructive and overfishing in the Pacific such as Taiwan, Japan, Korea, US as well as Indonesia and the Philippines begin to seriously reduce their fishing capacity.”

Greenpeace is campaigning for sustainable and equitable fisheries and a global network of marine reserves to cover 40 per cent of our oceans – area off limits to harmful fishing, and mining, drilling and other extractive activities. With marine reserves, our oceans and fish stocks can begin to recover.

ENDS

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