Problem overview:

     Meeting information requirements: The South Pacific Commission (SPC) in collaboration with the Forum Fishery Agency (FFA) and the University of Queensland have come with the bioeconomic model of Western Pacific Tuna Fisheries. This model will integrating information on the major tuna species in the Western Pacific with economic information for better decision making, which lead to efficiency and sustainability of development in the region.

Background:

      Integrating environment economic accounting and resource management at policy planning levels.

      At present, the only major industry in the Pacific that approaches the capability of Environmental Economic Accounting (EEA) is the offshore tuna industry. 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 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 South Pacific Commission (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 Forum Fisheries Agency (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 logline 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.

      The FFA examined the broader economic and social importance of Tuna to the Pacific islands (Gillett 1997). Together with the intensive statistical and economic models developed by the SPC, the Western Pacific Tuna fishery is perhaps the world's best-understood major fishery. Although the research team at the Secretariat for the Pacific Community is aware of EEA, they have not attempted to actually perform such an analysis (Lewis, personal communication).