Islands Business Magazine interviews Andrew Wright, Executive Director of the Pohnpei-based Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). Better known as the Tuna Commission, the WCPFC is linked to management and conservation of the Pacific’s tuna resources.
Wright…ensuring sustainable tuna stock in Pacific waters
By Dionisia Tabureguci
After years of gestation, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) was finally set up in 2004 to “bring together all those with an active interest in the tuna resources of the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) in an effort to work collaboratively for the effective management, long-term conservation and sustainable use of tuna stocks in this region,” says executive director Andrew Wright.
As an organisation therefore, the Tuna Commission—as it is more commonly referred to—is a meeting point for countries that own tuna fishing grounds in the Pacific and countries that are not from the region but who come here to fish. In fishing speak, the latter are more commonly known as Distant Water Fishing Nations (DWFNs).
More specifically, they include fishing boats from Asia, Europe, South America and to a lesser extent Australia and New Zealand.
Together, DWFNs are documented to haul out more fish from the Pacific Ocean than what the Pacific islands nations themselves do and therefore, their role in the management and conservation of the Pacific’s fish resources is considered very important.
Over the years, concerns have been expressed over the Pacific’s tuna resources and how they have been exploited—or overexploited as some believe—especially by DWFNs, as well as vessels that engage in Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.
Such a scenario would put an oversight organisation like the Tuna Commission under pressure to ensure the interests of its regional members are protected.
WCPFC members are—Australia, China, Canada, Cook Islands, European Community, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, France, Japan, Kiribati, Korea, Republic of Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Chinese Taipei, Tonga, Tuvalu, United States of America and Vanuatu.
Its participating territories are American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands,French Polynesia, Guam, New Caledonia,Tokelau andWallis and Futuna, while Indonesia is a cooperating non-member.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What was the idea behind the setting up of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission – just a brief summary of its role in the areas of tuna conservation and management?
WRIGHT: The origin of the WCPFC can probably be best traced to the Rio Earth Summit and international concerns at that time relating to the lack of institutional mechanisms to manage and conserve marine resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction i.e. on the high seas.
This was at a time of significant conflict and concern over high seas fishing – including in the South Pacific in relation to driftnet fishing.
At that time the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) undertook scientific work and research on regional tuna stocks and the Forum Fisheries Agency coordinated administrative arrangements among its members – focusing on their relations with distant water fishing nations for fisheries access.
Despite considerable political pressure from several distant water fishing nations FFA chose not to include them among its membership.
While this proved to serve the FFA member countries well it also meant that there was no institution that was responsible for conserving and managing tuna fisheries in the WCPO.
Those responsible for the establishment of the FFA in the mid-70’s were fully aware of this and knew that, in order to establish effective management arrangements for regional tuna stocks, at some point in the future they would need to develop additional institutional arrangements that would involve the distant water fishing nations.
It wasn’t until a new international Convention, known as the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, that was a supplement to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and dealt specifically with highly migratory fish stocks such as tunas), was negotiated in 1995 that Pacific Island countries felt it was time to start engaging distant water fishing nations in discussions on what collaborative arrangements might be possible.
So between 1994 and 2004 Pacific Island countries and territories and fishing nations entered a long negotiation firstly to agree to the text of a new international convention that established the WCPFC – and then to start to flesh out the administrative and other supporting procedures and processes that would make it work.
All that work was completed in June 2004. So the WCPFC brings together all those with an active interest in the tuna resources of the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) in an effort to work collaboratively for the effective management, long term conservation and sustainable use of tuna stocks in this region. This is, in effect, the objective stated in the WCPF Convention.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What are some pertinent issues right now on the conservation and management of tuna? What may be some challenges faced by the Commission in carrying out its task to help conserve tuna stocks for its member countries and the progress made in dealing with these challenges?
WRIGHT: This is a hard question because the challenges are different depending on who you speak to.
Apart from the challenges caused by rising oil prices, which impacts on everyone involved in the fishery, for many years the coastal States in the region, effectively the FFA member countries and the American and French territories, have aspired to develop their domestic tuna fishing industries.
At the same time, distant water fishing nations are anxious to secure long term access to the fishing grounds to support the activities of their national fleets.
Balancing these interests is proving challenging. Pacific countries are becoming increasingly actively engaged in the fishery.
I think there are mounting pressures for the distant water fishing nations to change traditional ways of operating, which were essentially over-the-horizon modes of fishing with minimal engagement or investment in shore-based services in the region, to one where local investment is probably going to determine access to long term fishing opportunities.
Of course, an overarching concern is being able to support the development aspirations of Pacific island countries and territories without jeopardising the ability of regional tuna stocks to sustain fishing – it is not much use promoting development, securing major investment, which most tuna fishery development initiatives require, and find that tuna stocks become over exploited and so jeopardise those investments.
The objective of the WCPF Convention acknowledges the need to ensure our fish stocks are used sustainably. I think this is a second major concern, managing fishing effort throughout the WCPO within sustainable limits.
The scientists have been telling us for some time that bigeye tuna, and to a lesser extent yellowfin tuna, are probably being over-fished and that these stocks will not be able to support such high levels of fishing indefinitely.
Unfortunately, the indications in 2007 are that fishing effort in the purse seine fishery is expanding – and new vessels continue to enter the fishery. Excess capacity, or when the catching power among all vessels in the fishery exceeds that which can support sustainable fishing operations, is a major concern in nearly all fisheries around the world.
In some cases it is supported by Governments which provide subsidies to vessels to enable them to continue uneconomic operations and it invariably leads to industry pressure being applied in management organisations like the WCPFC to take decisions that don’t limit catch or fishing effort when over-fishing is obviously occurring.
This results stocks becoming over-fished and collapsing. World fisheries are littered with examples of this. I would hate to think we in the WCPFC will not learn by those experiences.
Now some of the island countries, those making up the grouping known as the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, have developed a tool to manage purse seine fishing effort within their national waters.
This tool, known as the Vessel Day Scheme (VDS), is scheduled to become operational on 1 December 2007. It is quite a complicated arrangement which involves close coordination among the eight PNA members to manage purse seine fishing effort within agreed limits.
If the limits are adhered to there is potential to leverage a significant premium for access to national waters of the PNA – particularly if competition for access increases as the purse seine fleet grows.
However, ineffective implementation of the VDS, particularly in relation to an inability to constrain effort by granting access to whoever wants it will be detrimental for regional tuna stocks – and place investments in the fishery and associated contributions to the economic development of Pacific Island countries in jeopardy. Fisheries all over the world are now also required to make a major effort to minimise the impact of fishing operations on non-target fish or other marine animals that are caught incidentally during fishing operations.
The WCPFC is working at addressing this for WCPO tuna fisheries – focussing at this stage on sea birds, sea turtles and sharks. A fourth major challenge is making sure all those involved in the fishery participate fully in the work of the Commission. This includes providing full and accurate data on the operations of their fishing vessels in the Convention Area and also establishing effective control over those vessels – so applying and implementing the decisions of the Commission aimed at supporting conservation and management.
The biggest challenge in relation to this at present is in the west of the Convention Area, in the region of Indonesia, Philippines and to a lesser, but growing extent, Vietnam. Tuna fisheries in that region account for and estimated 25% of the total WCPO tuna catch – yet detailed information for the various fisheries in that region is poor and control over fishing vessels generally inadequate.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Is the WCPFC the only organisation involved in tuna fisheries management in the Pacific? If not, what is the role of the WCPFC relative to that of the other organisations?
WRIGHT: There are two other dedicated tuna regional fisheries management organisations with Pacific Ocean responsibilities. The Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna is, as the name suggests, dedicated to southern bluefin – which is a temperate water fish found in southern waters of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
In the Eastern Pacific, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission has a very similar role to that of WCPFC – where its responsibilities extend westward towards the WCPO to the eastern waters of Kiribati and French Polynesia. Any further west is the area of the WCPFC.
Tuna fisheries in the WCPFC area account for 51% of the global supply of tunas to world markets – and 78% of the total Pacific Ocean tuna catch. WCPFC has formalized relations with both IATTC and CCSBT, we exchange information with them regularly and participate in each other’s meetings.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What sort of networking does the Tuna Commission do in order to fulfill its mandate?
WRIGHT: We are required to establish and support networks that focus mainly on communications and information exchange with the 33 countries, the fishing entity of Chinese Taipei and territories that make up the current membership of the Commission, other fishing States with activities in the WCPO, a range of other inter-governmental organizations such as IATTC and CCSBT, the fishing industry from all over the globe and non-government agencies with an interest in WCPO tuna fisheries. It’s a full time job!
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: There is another existing establishment in the Pacific (FFA) that looks after the interest of tuna fishing in the Forum member countries? Do the two organisations work together? Or how complementary are their roles?
WRIGHT: I'm happy to say that WCPFC works very closely with both the FFA secretariat in Honiara and the SPC Oceanic Fisheries Programme (SPC-OFP) in Noumea.
Both SPC and FFA played a central role throughout the negotiations to establish the WCPFC. The FFA Secretariat’s provision of technical and policy advice to FFA members has certainly provided considerable support to their participation in the Commission.
The need for this support is likely to continue for the foreseeable future as the work underway in the Commission does place significant strain on generally under-resourced national fisheries administrations.
The SPC-OFP has been the region's main tuna research body assisting its members with fishery monitoring programmes, maintaining a regional tuna fisheries database and providing scientific support for national and regional management for more than 30 years.
The WCPFC has benefited from this in that many of the required data collection systems and historical databases were already established and being administered by SPC - we didn't have to start from scratch. The WCPFC now contracts the OFP to provide data management and stock assessment services for the WCPFC Convention Area as a whole. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, as it avoids duplication and complements the SPC-OFP work in its member countries.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Sometime back, you raised concerns on the rise in illegal fishing vessels in Pacific waters and the shift of South American vessels from Eastern to Central Pacific.
Is illegal fishing in the WCPO increasing - if so, why?
WRIGHT: Yes, and I am still concerned about that. Illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing is a concern to fisheries management agencies everywhere. Given the general deterioration of fish stocks in other oceans, the relative productive fishing grounds here, the large geographic area covered by the WCPO and a limited capacity to carry out monitoring and surveillance throughout this region the WCPO probably experiences very high levels of IUU fishing.
This not only involves fishing by fleets which do not participate in the work of the Commission but no doubt includes the activities of some vessels that belong to members of the Commission – particularly in respect of, for example, the under-reporting of catches. The challenge with IUU fishing is that, because it is generally unreported, we really do not know the extent of it.
Some experts estimate it could account for an additional 10% on top of the estimated reported catch – so for the WCPO that could amount to an additional 200,000 metric tonnes of tunas that are harvested each year in the WCPO that we know very little about! Not only does IUU fishing result in lost revenue opportunities, but those operations do not provide data to assist in assessing the status of local fish stocks and they undermine the sacrifices that those that comply with the decisions of the Commission make in their efforts to achieve sustainable use.
In relation to the migration west of some Latin American vessels as a result of poor fishing conditions in the eastern Pacific, yes, we have received reports of illegal activities from the zones of both Cook Islands and French Polynesia and of course the majority of their activities on the high seas are unreported.
In addition, the licensing of some of these vessels by any FFA member is in contravention of agreements both within the FFA (which relates to the licensing of vessels that are not on FFA’s Regional Register of Foreign Fishing Vessels) and within the Commission (and an undertaking not to support the activities of vessels in the WCPO that are not flagged to a member of the WCPFC). This creates some major challenges for this organisation – that will hopefully be addressed at its meeting in Guam in December.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: How does a vessel get permission to fish in the WCPO? Why haven't the Latin American vessels requested permission to fish?
WRIGHT: Firstly, to operate on the high seas in the WCPF Convention Area, members of the Commission need to officially authorize each of their vessels and provide the vessel details to us so that we can place the vessel on the WCPFC Record of Fishing Vessels.
This then establishes that the member is taking responsibility for that vessel when it is operating in the WCPF Convention Area. Within the WCPFC rules, there’s no capacity to authorize a vessel unless you are a member of the Commission. I guess the Latin Americans know this and that is why they have not applied to have their vessels placed on the WCPFC Record of Fishing Vessels.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What is the Commission doing to try and better regulate fishing in the WCPO?
WRIGHT: The Commission’s efforts to better regulate fishing fleets includes the development and implementation of a satellite-based vessel monitoring system for vessels operating on the high seas that will complement that being managed by the FFA secretariat for vessels operating in the national waters of FFA members, the development of a regional observer programme that will involve the placement of observers on fishing vessels operating in the region to collect independent information, procedures to support the boarding and inspection of fishing vessels on the high seas, procedures to verify transhipment when vessels transfer their catch to other vessels such as carriers, means to more effectively encourage compliance with the decisions of the Commission including means to deter the support of any activity associated with IUU fishing and efforts to improve the detail and scope of data that is provided by fishing vessels in respect of their fishing operations.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Why are the Latin American vessels, which normally operate in the Eastern Pacific, shifting to the central Pacific? Why the depressed fishing conditions? Something to do with climate change, etc?
WRIGHT: Yes, IATTC scientists have been advising that tuna stocks in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) cannot sustain current levels of fishing capacity and have been calling for a reduction in capacity among the fleets active there for many years. Good fishing conditions were experienced earlier this decade, as a result of strong recruitment to the fishery of juvenile fish, and fleets expanded in response. Now fishing conditions have returned to more long-term average conditions and there is a need to establish tighter fishing effort controls so that fishing operations are closer to that which can be sustained, some EPO fleets have moved west into the WCPO.
This highlights one of the most significant challenges shared among all RFMOs managing tuna at present. An inability to secure agreement among all those who are fishing tuna stocks to cut back on their fishing effort when scientists advise stocks are threatened with over-exploitation. It appears no-one is willing to take hard decisions that will lead to fleet reductions. It cannot go on indefinitely. Perhaps only a major crisis, such as a complete collapse of stocks, will force people to take the responsible action required to establish sustainable fisheries. If it gets to that stage, some fleets, and some economies, including Pacific Island economies, are going to suffer considerable hardship.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: A recent paper by Professor Tom Kompas of the Australian National University titled "Tuna Resource Management: Economic Profit and Optimal Effort in the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Fisheries" (an article on this was featured in a recent issue of our magazine) warned of the dangers of the region being over-exploited by exposure to more open foreign fishing vessel access and the use of effective modern technology.
I notice that concern over these two factors have been raised in the past. A cover article in the May 2005 edition of Islands Business magazine carried a story of how new technology in catching fish was a growing concern for some as it was raking out juvenile fish from the Pacific ocean. It would be interesting to talk a bit more about just how tuna fishing technology has developed, what are some of the new age equipments (compared to say, the 80s), the capabilities of new technologies and what are the implications of technological advance in the tuna fishing industry. On the increase in open access, what has been the noted trend?
WRIGHT: In the early 1980s the average purse seine vessel was catching 3,500 mt in a good year – around 15 metric tonnes per fishing day. Today, although small vessels still harvest this amount, larger, high-tech vessels are averaging closer to 30 mt/day and 8,500 mt a year. Some vessels now operate almost continuously for 3 or 4 years before going for major maintenance on a slip.
Other than the Japanese seiners, which supply niche markets in Japan, most seiners transship their catch to carrier vessels on the fishing grounds rather than undertaking long voyages to deliver their catch to distant canneries or home ports. In places, like Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, canneries have been established close to the major fishing grounds – which also results in increased periods fishing. Modern seiners have sophisticated equipment such as bird radars (to detect birds associated with schools of fish), side scanning sonar that can extend several thousand meters each side of the vessel, helicopters and sensitive depth sounders and fish finders. In addition, in the last decade there has been an increase in the use of man-made rafts or fish aggregating devices (FADs) and fishing on naturally occurring logs which aggregate schools of tuna. Not only does FAD fishing generally result in higher catch rates of tuna but tuna schools associated with FADs generally consist of smaller, juvenile bigeye.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: It has been suggested that the Pacific go into value-adding and go to the world market as a collective body to market their tuna and to cut down on the politics involved. This suggests that PICs could very well handle their tuna industry much better than they do now, not just in conservation and management but in marketing as well as development of the industry. What do you think of this opinion and what is your reading of the Pacific tuna industry so far and how it has contributed to development of Pacific islanders?
WRIGHT: Approximately 45% of the WCPO tuna catch is taken from within the exclusive economic zones of FFA members – and so they do control access to a significant proportion of the total WCPO tuna fishery. For 20 years or more observers have suggested that they have the capacity to establish a cartel type arrangement and so dictate supply to world markets – including influencing prices. The challenge to achieve this among such a diverse group of countries is to be able to satisfy the individual needs and development aspirations of all of these countries – or at least those responsible for the lion’s share of the catch. It has not proven possible to do that and so some countries continue to license fleets under bilateral access agreements while others are pushing ahead with aggressive development of their domestic industries.
While the development of the domestic industries in some Pacific countries does involve Pacific Island nationals, by and large, domestic development is driven by foreign interests. There are some good reasons for that – among them the significant investment required to establish and operate these ventures plus the fact that local experience is still at its early stages of development.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Annex B of the Vava'u Declaration on Pacific Fisheries Resources, a result of this year's Forum Meeting in Tonga, indicated a move by Pacific's Forum member countries to try to consolidate the region's tuna fishing industry. What are your views on this move?
WRIGHT: The Leader’s recognition of the significance of fisheries as the region’s premier renewable resource requiring concerted efforts to establish conservation and management arrangements to support sustainable fisheries is overdue and to be commended. As I said above, I do believe that there are already trends towards a restructuring of the regional tuna industry that will see a gradual decrease in the proportion of fishing operations that are supported under bilateral access arrangements and an increase in operations based in the region. My only hope is that the substance of the Vava’u Declaration is not lost on administrators and mangers and that the over-arching principle of supporting development within sustainable limits is in fact applied.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: One of the highlight of governments proposed actions (Communique of Vavau Forum meet) is to: "Fully implement without delay the conservation and management measures developed and endorsed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC)" and "seeking the urgent adoption of additional measures by the WCPFC to address over-fishing of bigeye and yellowfin, including a reduction in longline catches and addressing purse seine fishing, and specific steps to reduce the catch of juvenile bigeye and yellowfin."
What are WCPFC's tuna conservation and management measures and what are its additional measures to address overfishing of big-eye and yellowfin, that the Forum ministers are referring to?
WRIGHT: Conservation and management measures are the formal binding measures adopted by the Commission which all members are under obligation to implement at the national level. If I remember correctly, the Commission has adopted around 15 different conservation and management measures in the two years it has been operational. Some of these relate to regulatory issues – such as the establishment of the WCPFC Record of Fishing Vessels, a schedule for the development and implementation of the regional observer programme and the VMS, for example, and conservation and management measures relating to both target and non-target stocks – non-target being those fish species and other marine resources taken incidentally during tuna fishing operations. Among these are two conservation and management measures that attempt to address the concerns relating to the over-fishing of yellowfin and bigeye tuna. One adopted in 2005 focuses on limiting fishing effort in the purse seine fishery between 20ºN and 20ºS and establishing a catch limit for fleets operating in the long line fishery.
The 2006 measure seeks to establish capacity limits on fisheries taking yellowfin and bigeye using other fishing gears throughout the Convention Area. At last year’s annual Session in Samoa, the Commission agreed that at the 2007 Session, scheduled for Guam in the first week of December, the Commission would develop and adopt a supplementary measure that address the issue of relatively large catches of juvenile bigeye and yellowfin tuna taken by purse seiners that fish on FADs – floating objects or fish aggregating devices.
While this will be a step in the right direction challenges remain in reducing juvenile bigeye and yellowfin catches in that the longline fishery takes significant amounts of bigeye that have not yet matured and also that surface fisheries in Indonesia and Philippines are responsible for significant amounts of juvenile yellowfin and bigeye catch. A measure that is confined to FAD fishing alone will not achieve the reductions in juvenile bigeye and yellowfin catch that are necessary to reduce the threat of the stock becoming overfished.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: General discussion: any points we missed but which you feel are important to highlight?
WRIGHT: I think you have it pretty well covered Dionisia! Some of these views are likely to be a little contentious for some members of the Commission Dionisia – so perhaps you better preclude everything by saying that you sort me out for my personal views and that these might not represent the views of all the Commission members. Thanks.
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NOTE: This is the original transcript of an interview with Andrew Wright, published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as: Interview: Andrew Wright, Executive Director, Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission; pp 48,49, December 2007 edition.
Islands Business is the flagship publication of Islands Business International.
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