Problem overview:

     Awareness and visions: Pacific Island countries have been receiving enormous income from distant fishing nations paid for fishing in PIC territories. But this industry is now imposing a strain on PIC marine resources and PICs were aware that without fishing management, their resources would soon be depleted.

     Meeting information requirements: Information on fishery resources is most important for the formalization of fishing management plans that will yield the most income from fishing without over exceeding the sustainable rate.

Background:

      Managing the tuna resource by international agreements

      In 1979, twelve members of the South Pacific Forum joined together to create the Forum Fisheries Agency. Located in Honiara, Solomon Islands, the FFA has been highly successful in helping the 18 member countries negotiate fees and pass fisheries legislation on high seas fishing. In addition, the FFA services included:

• Collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistics and ecological information on fisheries (in coordination with the South Pacific Commission's Oceanic Fisheries Program).
  
  
• Coordinating regional fisheries, including surveillance of fishing vessel operations, with a goal of sustainable management of the resource.
  
  
• Monitoring economic information on the value and amount of catch taken.
  
  
• Assisting member countries with fisheries legislation and advice, especially with regard to the development of offshore fisheries.
  
  
• Attending to specific research requests from member countries.

      Many of these functions were done in partnership with the Secretariat for the Pacific Community in Noumea. In general, the FFA handles economic and political issues and the SPC conducts scientific assessment and monitoring of the tuna stocks.

      Between the FFA and the Secretariat for the Pacific Community, the high seas tuna fishery in the Central Pacific was the region's best-understood and managed fishery.

      A fleet of large (and super) purse-seiners and long-line fishing vessels from Distant Water Fishing Nations fish for Tuna within the domain of the FFA. The largest fleets include vessels from Japan, the United States, Korea, China, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Most of the fishing was done in the central and western Pacific in the Exclusive Economic Zones of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, PNG, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu.

      The tuna clippers take their catches to be sold and processed in five canneries located in American Samoa, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and PNG. Most of the processed fish were exported to markets in metropolitan countries, but a substantial amount circulated back into the Pacific islands for inexpensive local consumption (usually cheaper than local fresh fish).

      The distant water fishing nations paid Pacific Island nations fishing license fees to harvest fish. The fees were based on a percentage of the value of the catch taken within a particular country's EEZ. In 1995, the catch was worth US$1.7 billion dollars and in 1996 the region received an estimated $66,279,815 in access fees (Gillett 1997). These fees were important to the governments of the small Pacific nations, often exceeding all other export earnings.

      About 10,000 Pacific islanders, including nearly 4% of all women in the economic sector, were employed directly in the tuna fishery. An estimated 30,000 other people were employed in associated activities, such as providing supplies and services for the 400 industrial-scale tuna vessels based in the region, including 30 purse seiners 40 pole/line vessels, and about 320 longliners. The annual expenditures of these locally based vessels approached $100 million (Gillett 1997).

Issues for the environmental assessment of high seas fisheries

      The tuna resource reflects problems of forestry resources - whether to allow foreign companies to remove the resource on a large scale and pay limited royalty fees or to develop local industries capable of harvesting the resource and attain greater income by selling the processed resources themselves.

      Both resources were important economically and ecologically. Both resources were over-extended in terms of global capitalisation. Over-harvesting either resource will create environmental problems for the small nations of the Pacific. And finally, the Pacific islands were heavily dependant on the political favour of the countries who wanted to take the resources. Fishing fees and timber royalties were both important cash income but pale beside foreign aid to the region.

The central issues:

1. Until recently, researchers believed tuna stocks were not being fished to capacity. Now there is evidence that some of the species are fished at their maximum sustainable level. Member governments will have to decide how to limit entry into the fishery. Since each member country gets fees from the number of ships fishing in their area, there may be reluctance to reduce effort (and income) by one country for the benefit of another. A meeting in June 1997 agreed to prepare a management plan for the fishery.
   
   
2. Coastal fisheries in the Pacific islands are unable to expand much beyond their present productivity and are in decline in many areas from overfishing. Future development, especially commercial development, will depend on offshore stocks. If the offshore stocks are nearing their maximum sustainable yield, there will be increasing conflict between local use and foreign use of the same resource.
   
   At some point, government will have to decide which is worth more to the country in the long run, the fishing fees paid by foreign nations or the development of local offshore tuna fishing capability. This is not a simple evaluation. Attempts to operate purse seiners from the Pacific Island countries have not been economically successful for a variety of reasons and small boats can't fish the most productive offshore areas.
   
   
3. While data reporting by distant water fishing nations was satisfactory, the Pacific island countries themselves have been negligent in reporting their own tuna catches.

      Regulating the offshore tuna fishery was complex because the stock does not belong to or remain in any one country but migrates between several countries. Therefore, the regional system of assessment and management was a satisfactory methodology. Results of the studies and regular updates on the industry were sent to member governments. Major economic decisions were made at annual meetings of all the countries. Experts gave presentations and full documentation on each issue as necessary to assist in reaching satisfactory conclusions.

Assessment and Monitoring

Obtaining a profile of the tuna industry is simplified by having:

• Only four primary species of fish: skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis), yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) and albacore tuna (Thunnus alalunga).
  
  
• 1,366 registered boats of known (and standardised) fishing capability.
  
  
• Catch and effort log sheets provided by the fishers.
  
  
• a management oriented regional body (Forum Fisheries Agency).
  
  
• a statistics body (Secretariat for the Pacific Community Oceanic Fisheries Programme) supported by member countries and various donor countries.
  
  
• highly qualified staff and adequate budgets.
  
  
• rigidly enforced mandatory reporting of data.
  
  
• on board observers to verify information.
  
  
• aggressive enforcement of fishing licence regulations.

      Even though the SPC statistics programme on tuna has been active since 1981, a bioeconomic model of Western Pacific Tuna Fisheries is only now reaching completion. The bioeconomic programme is a collaborative effort between the University of Queensland, the SPC and the FFA. The overall goal is to integrate the available information on the population biology of major tuna species in the Western Pacific with economic information on the fisheries and markets to provide advice to FFA member countries on the optimal economic levels of sustainable fishing effort (OFP 1997). The project consists of three related components:

1. Solomon Islands Model: Estimation of the optimal (profit maximising) levels of effort by domestic pole-and-line and purse seine fleets in Solomon Islands.
   
   
2. Regional Model. Estimation of the optimal (access revenue maximising) levels of effort by distant water fishing nation purse seine, pole and line and longline fleets on a regional level.
   
   
3. Market Model Estimation of the impact on tuna prices of any significant change in purse seine harvests and access fees in the region.

Sustainable management of the tuna stocks

      150 participants met in Majuro, Marshall Islands in June 1997 for the Second Multilateral High-Level Conference on the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific. The meeting discussed the future sustainable management of the world's most important tuna fishery (Singh, 1997). A SPC scientist presented the findings of the Offshore Fishery Programme on the status of the Pacific tuna. Based on the scientific outlook, the ministerial level meeting formulated the Majuro Declaration on the Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific. A conservation/management mechanism will be established by June 2000.

      Fishing industry observers, representing Japan, the United States, and other distant water fishing nations, agreed that the plan was needed and that they would cooperate with its development and enforcement. The meeting was considered a milestone in international fisheries cooperation for sustainable development.