Tuna industry body International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) is urging delegates at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s(WCPFC) annual meeting in Fiji to improve their control over fisheries by strengthening vessel oversight and improving tuna conservation measures for long-term sustainability.
ISSF stresses the need to adopt electronic monitoring standards, and better manage transshipment to improve data collection and prevent illegal fishing in the western and central Pacific Ocean, which accounts for 51 percent of the world’s tuna catch.
According to ISSF, comprehensive observer coverage of fishing vessels is the key to collecting independent, robust data, which are essential to effective fisheries management through compliance monitoring and verification of catch, fishing effort, species composition and bycatch. One hundred percent observer coverage of all industrial fishing in WCPO tuna fisheries – either through human observers on board or electronic monitoring (EM) – is achievable and necessary.
The current situation is that WCPFC requires only purse seine vessels to have 100 percet observer coverage. Longline vessels are to achieve just a 5 percent minimum level of observer coverage.
“RFMOs in the Indian, Atlantic, and Eastern Pacific Oceans have now all adopted interim minimum standards for EM. Despite the Commission’s establishment of an EM working group in 2014, WCPFC has not yet agreed to an EM programme or EM standards,” ISSF states.
“WCPFC must adopt interim EM programme standards for all gear types, along with a timeline for implementation beginning in 2025. These standards should be consistent with the standards of other tuna RFMOS to account for the many vessels that move among tuna RFMOs.”
WCPFC scientists recommend that the Commission explore options to expand the observer coverage on longline vessels through both human and electronic methods.
ISSF also points out that independent and complete data on at-sea transshipment – a key step in the seafood supply chain – is also important to fisheries managers, and when it is not well managed, at-sea transshipment can be a conduit for IUU catches to enter the market.
ISSF states that WCPFC’s measure on transshipment is insufficient and not aligned with best practice requirements.
“Although WCFPC established a working group for this issue in 2019, and that group met several times in this year and last year, no recommended improvements have been agreed to,” an ISSF representative commented.
“We are therefore urging the Commission to strengthen its regulation of at-sea transshipment at this meeting to ensure at-sea activity is rigorously regulated and all required data are reported. Needed enhancements include requiring that all transshipment activities are reported to WCPFC in near real-time. We are also seeking electronic reporting for all transshipment activity and a progressive increase in observer coverage on unloading vessels involved in transshipment.”
There’s also a list of best practice “asks” in ISSF’s 2024 position statement to WCPFC, including that WCPFC managers continue to take science-based management action to ensure WCPO stocks are healthy, utilising management procedures (MP), or harvest strategies designed to meet management objectives set by fisheries managers.
“WCPFC has made good progress in this critical area recently. In 2022, the Commission adopted a skipjack MP. In 2023, WCPFC translated outputs of that MP into fishing catch-and-effort controls in an updated tropical tuna measure. A harvest control rule for North Pacific albacore was also adopted,” ISSF’s representative stated.
“WCPFC needs to build on these successes by continuing to develop MPs for bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks and adopting an interim MP for South Pacific albacore tuna. WCPFC also needs to cooperate with IATTC, its peer RFMO in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, to ensure that South Pacific Albacore is managed consistently throughout its range”.
