Overview of Fisheries and Stock Status of Tuna, Billfish, and Sharks in the WCPO / November 16, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

As usual, the SPC science crew and the FFA economics crew present their “Overview of Tuna Fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, including Economic Conditions – 2023 Report” to the WCPFC plenary at this time of year.

This scenario is not too different from last year’s one, with the trend to maintain…. only when you take a “decade view” can you see the more significant picture.

As usual, this made me wonder further about the value of eco-labels… While the four tuna stocks stay in the green, some bycatch is in the doldrums. Remember that principle 2 of MSC concerns ecosystem considerations, including bycatch… I don’t think there is any PS tuna fishery that is not certified in the region, even if five years ago, it was only for “free schools” yet now includes FAD sets… which can negatively impact bycatch.

In any case, it is always a good and transparent read to present the status of the biggest fishery in the world.

The updates for ﬁsheries catch and eﬀort data for 2023 showed no major changes compared to 2022. In terms of the overall catch of tuna, the 2023 catch of approximately 2.62 million metric tonnes (mt) was slightly lower than for 2022. Catches have been similar for the past 4 years, declining by around 10% since the historical peak in 2019. The purse seine (PS) ﬁshery remains the dominant gear, accounting for 70% of the total tuna catch, followed by the combined ‘Other’ category (17%), which includes various gear types and the handline ﬁsheries from Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia. Skipjack remains the dominant species (approx. 1,636 million mt), accounting for 62% of the total catch, followed by yellowﬁn 28% (approx. 746,000 mt), bigeye 6% (approx. 146,000 mt) and albacore 4% (96,000 mt), with approximately double the amount of albacore caught south of the equator compared to north of the equator in the WCPFC-CA.

Eﬀort in the purse seine ﬁshery in 2023 was 47,623 days, only slightly higher than 2022. The number of sets has decreased by around 20% since 2010. Purse seine catch in weight is dominated by skipjack, followed by yellowﬁn, then bigeye, with a negligible catch of albacore. While the total purse catch has been stable over the last four years, the 2023 catch of 1.837 million mt was 13% below the historical peak in 2019.

Eﬀort in the longline ﬁshery in 2023 was 602 million hooks, slightly lower than 2022, and has decreased by around 22% since the historic peak in 2012. The decline in hooks per year is consistent with the decline in catch per year of about 18% since 2010. Longline catch in weight is dominated by yellowﬁn, then albacore, then bigeye, with a minor skipjack catch. Longline catches in the last two years (228,000 mt in 2023) have increased slightly despite a continued decline in total eﬀort. This increase appears entirely due to increased catches of albacore, primarily south of the equator.

Pole and line eﬀort has continued to decline, although some ﬂattening in the rate of decline is seen in the last decade. Japanese vessels are the largest component of the ﬂeet, followed by domestic Paciﬁc Island vessels.

Based on their most recent assessments (skipjack 2022, bigeye and yellowﬁn 2023, south Paciﬁc albacore 2024), stocks of all four tuna are estimated to be close to their respective target objectives for biomass depletion and not overﬁshed or undergoing overﬁshing. The next tuna assessment will be skipjack in 2025.

Southwest Paciﬁc swordﬁsh was assessed in 2021 and was classiﬁed as not overﬁshed and not undergoing overﬁshing. Southwest Paciﬁc striped marlin was assessed in 2024; however, the assessment was not accepted for management advice at SC20. The assessment will undergo more technical work and be presented to SC21 in 2025. Management advice remains as per 2019 that the stock is likely overﬁshed and close to undergoing overﬁshing.

For the key sharks, the most recent assessment was for silky sharks in the WCPO in 2024, which concluded that the stock was unlikely to be overﬁshed but that stock biomass, while displaying a recovering trend, was uncertain. The conclusion that this stock is now unlikely to be undergoing overﬁshing is an improvement from the previous assessment that concluded that the stock was likely being overﬁshed. For the other sharks assessed by the SSP, the southwest Paciﬁc blue shark was assessed in 2022 as unlikely overﬁshed and unlikely to be undergoing overﬁshing, and the southwest Paciﬁc mako shark has uncertain stock status after the inconclusive ﬁrst assessment attempt in 2021. The Oceanic whitetip shark in the WCPO will be assessed in 2025; based on the 2019 assessment, it remains considered as overﬁshed and subject to overﬁshing.

The 2023 South Pacific troll albacore catch (1,192 mt) was the second lowest catch level since 1980 (744 mt were reported in 1983), largely owing to a contraction in NZ’s troll fleet operating in the region. The New Zealand troll fleet (94 vessels catching 864 mt in 2023) and the United States troll fleet (10 vessels catching 328 mt in 2023) accounted for all of the 2023 albacore troll catch, although minor contributions also came from the Canadian, the Cook Islands and French Polynesian fleets when their fleets are active in this fishery.

In 2023, market prices for purse seine-caught products increased. Thai imports averaged $1,773/mt, marking an 8% increase from 2022, while Yaizu prices increased by 12% to $1,923/mt.

Conversely, prices for longline-caught yellowfin decreased across all markets. In Yaizu, prices fell by 28% to $5.07/kg. Prices for fresh and frozen yellowfin from selected ports decreased by 17% to $7.33/kg and 26% to $5.60/kg, respectively. The price from Oceania also declined by 5% to $8.51/kg, partly due to the appreciation of the US dollar against the Japanese yen.

Prices for longline-caught bigeye also declined across most markets except Oceania. In Japan, average prices from selected ports for fresh bigeye fell by 7% to $12.29/kg, and frozen bigeye decreased by 25% to $7.11/kg. However, the price for fresh imports from Oceania increased by 8% to $14.11/kg. In the U.S, fresh bigeye import prices rose by 4% to a record high of $12.03/kg in 2022, before slightly declining by 4% to $11.19/kg in 2023. Thai import prices for albacore decreased by 10% to $3.19/kg in 2023. Similarly, US fresh prices declined by 5% to $5.63/kg, and Japanese selected ports fresh prices fell by 20% to $3.24/kg.

In 2023, the total estimated delivered value of the tuna catch in the WCPFC-CA increased marginally by 4% to $6.1 billion. The purse seine fishery, valued at $3.5 billion, saw a 7% rise from 2022, representing 56% of the total value. In contrast, the longline fishery’s value decreased slightly by 1% to $1.6 billion, while the pole and line catch value dropped by 11% to $312 million, attributed to reduced catches and a decline in the Yaizu price for pole-and-line-caught skipjack. Conversely, the value of catches from other gears increased by 11%, reaching $820 million.

In 2023, the WCPFC-CA skipjack catch was valued at $3 billion, a marginal 2% increase from the previous year, and accounted for nearly half of the total tuna catch value. The value of the albacore tuna catch decreased by 9% to $304 million, while the values for yellowfin and bigeye catches increased to $2.1 billion (+10%) and $784 million (+4%), respectively.

In 2023, economic conditions across purse seine, tropical longline, and southern longline fisheries in the WCPFC-CA improved compared with 2022. The tropical purse seine index improved, remaining above average at 109, driven by rising fish prices and declining fuel costs. From 2018 to 2020, this index stayed considerably above its 20-year average, primarily due to high catch rates. In 2022, the index dropped to 98, its lowest level since 2014. However, it rebounded in 2023, driven by an increase in fish prices, declining fuel costs and higher catch rates.

For the southern longline fishery, 2023 saw a positive trend, with the index approaching its 20-year average, supported by higher catch rates and lower fuel prices. Similarly, the economic conditions for the tropical longline fishery improved, nearing the 20-year average, driven by increased catch rates and decreased fuel prices.

The Summer Academy of the CAPFISH project / November 12, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

The past few weeks have been intense for me while working on the PSM side in Tuvalu. Since Sunday, I have participated in a series of lectures at the summer academy of the CAPFISH project, organised by the World Maritime University (a UN University) and supported by the Korea Maritime Institute here in Suva, Fiji.

Education is one of the most powerful tools for empowering people, changing attitudes, and solving complex problems. Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing presents a multifaceted international governance and sustainability challenge that must be addressed from various specialist angles.

Solving this problem in the real world requires coordination, a holistic understanding of the issue, and the dissemination of knowledge to developing country actors who need it most and can effect change in their communities and institutions.

Through a series of educational workshops, the CAPFISH Project shares the expertise of UN specialized agencies. It imparts both academic and practical knowledge to maritime professionals from across the developing world. CAPFISH is a transdisciplinary initiative integrating science, economics, marine policy, ocean governance, law and regulation, maritime technology and operations, safety at sea, societal factors, human rights, and compliance monitoring and enforcement.

CAPFISH aligns with SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) and SDG 4 (Quality Education) to tackle the challenges posed by IUU fishing, which affects the achievement of SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).

My role has involved being a regional facilitator, providing thematic and expert suggestions for the lectures, as well as teaching various topics that I have engaged with over the last few years, including:

- Quantification of IUU Fishing in the Pacific Islands Region and the Adjacent High Seas
- Official and Private Certifications in Fisheries in the WCPO
- Human Rights at Sea: A Fisher’s Perspective
- Examples of Cooperation on IUU Fishing: the FFA PSM Framework and the ePSM Tool
- The Challenges Surrounding a Regional CDS as a Compliance and Trade Tool.

It is an absolute honour to be entrusted with supporting the team at the World Maritime University and collaborating as a lecturer in the various areas of my work.

The academy lasts two weeks at the beautiful Novotel in Lami, near Suva. Additionally, this will be my last travel job for the year.

The passing of Hugh Walton / October 24, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

The big thing about fishing is that it has its own culture and its own universe. It’s very difficult to describe, but it is one of the things that still works in deep human relationships. I always say that fisheries are about people more than fish… and as the cliche goes… there is no coincidence that the word “ship” is used in friendship.

Fisheries seem to attract a lot of characters… (I included myself in that)… and in the Pacific, there are quite a bunch… As I’m sitting in a meeting room in Busan in South Korea, at the FAO PSMA working group, the sad yet not unexpected news of the death of Hugh Walton, a friend and mentor, makes this sunny day a bit gloomier.

I have always been very thankful to him; he gave me the only thing I could not get by myself as an immigrant: “an opportunity."

*Hugh’s favourite poem.* **Sam Hunt's "Beware the Man" as painted by Dick Frizzell.** **Source**

The Greeks have this concept of a protector, Agyieus, like an older brother; because I didn’t have references for this life as a consultant, I had chosen in the Pacific, he was one of those references for me.

We both come from fishing boat backgrounds, which formed the basis of our friendship and views… Sometimes, I would come up with ideas that were not standard in our line of work, and he would say, "Yeah, we should try that; we will do that… The usual hasn't worked so far.”

He believed in people. I am one of his exponents. I have grown up with not many principles, but there indeed are two I uphold: I profoundly dislike ungratefulness and pretentiousness. Hugh was neither of those.

My family also grew fond of him, and a book for “uncle Hugh” was part of our Christmas shopping for almost two decades.

He had a very colourful life and worked tirelessly for all the big fisheries organisations in the region, including USP, SPC, and FFA. I doubt there are any Pacific island fisheries leaders who weren’t trained or helped by him over the last four decades.

I started working close to him in Kavieng, Papua New Guinea, where he fostered and was in charge of the Fishing College for many years. There, I realised that fisheries weren’t just a job but his life. There was little tradition of commercial fishing in PNG; the industry had to be built from scratch. What we have in the Pacific now is much more than before. He also instigated the mariculture research facility supported by a small resort.

I think some of his most outstanding achievements would definitely be the Fisheries College in PNG and the Observer Standards for the entire fishing fleet. All the Observers in the Pacific are based on the standards that he initiated and worked on; he set up the structure to evaluate the quantification of IUU fishing that will be done every five years now. He was in charge of the project to negotiate access to the EU.

A few years ago, the EU named and shamed the Pacific Island fishing countries. We had to mobilise, and he asked me to help with this. We managed to get the card system removed, an example that was followed globally because of Hugh’s vision, working with FFA’s support.

Hugh’s work brought labour condition requirements to the forefront. We were the first region in the world with standards where the fishermen are covered by their conditions of employment.

A few years ago, the FFA, where Hugh worked, also received world recognition as the most advanced organisation in preventing IUU fishing. He was the mentor at the centre of that.

He also trusted me with many jobs, yet there are three jobs I’m particularly proud of, which I wrote about in the past: the plastics assessment, the IUU quantification, and the last transhipment impracticability study.

In any case, I could write for days about his work. With him, we believed it was our job, to get ourselves out of a job, because we do capacity building.

As a human, he was far from perfect, yet he was the 1st one to recognise that… being a hard drinker and a long-term smoker shortened his life… yet he lived on his own terms.

In his late biography, I was honoured when he asked me to write the foreword and the last paragraph of the book; something he wrote is hitting me deeply at the moment.

"A line from Sam Hunt that I have always liked, a lovely line, evocative of a number of things,

Beware the man that tries to fit you out in his idea of a hat.

Yes, as my friend Francisco has said I have tended not to follow a path in life, I have made my own, I have just been bloody incredibly lucky, these evolving experiences, so much about the upbringing I have had, taking my opportunities following my heart, and my wonderful whanau.”

Moe mai ra Uncle Hugh

Completing and Approving "Deep Dive 3", ISA's most advanced training / October 9, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Done! I went over 50 lessons, each with its exam, plus a general module exam required to access the next module. A minimum of 80% was needed to pass each exam.

I enjoyed the Deep Dive 3 learning opportunity. It wasn’t easy, and I had to dive deep (pun intended) into my background knowledge of UNLOS, Chemical, Physical, Geological, and Biological Oceanography, Environmental Assessment Best Practices, and the staggering engineering challenges associated with evaluating, prospecting, and potentially mining in the “Area” (The international seabed area – under ISA jurisdiction – is the seabed and ocean floor and the subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. It represents around 50% of the total area of the world’s oceans)

I aimed to have the best and most direct information for an educated opinion on this challenging, controversial, yet helpful topic for humanity as a whole.

The reality is that 'if it can't be grown, it must be mined.’ It is impossible to argue with that. The rest is where we draw the compromises.

Thanks to the International Seabed Authority for setting up this unique and transparent opportunity that I hope will help me further my career on compliance issues in the marine realm.

The volatility of container trade pricing and what it means for tuna containarisation / October 8, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

I have been dealing with containerisation vs. carriers in the tuna industry for a while now. The number of times over the last two decades that I have heard carriers are out (mostly from consultants and bureaucrats) … feels bigger than the number of containers exported with tuna from the region.

In fact, I wrote a couple of reports for FFA and then FAO about this, as well as many blogs about the separation of containerisation (which implies landing) from Transhipment.

In a nutshell, I firmly believe that containerisation in the Pacific will always be, at best, a minor complementary activity to transhipment.

This is not because of any particular issue surrounding the activities and/or actions of the Pacific island administrations themselves… but mainly because of economies of scale, geographic isolation, and the monstrous investments necessary to develop, build, upgrade, and maintain capable ports able to handle container vessels.

And if that wasn’t enough, the fishing effort epicenters are behaving erratically due ti the intrinsic variability of climate change, and then you need to add the massive volatility in the container transport costs

The FFA TRADE AND INDUSTRY NEWS, a publication I find to be an excellent and somewhat undervalued resource, recently featured an article that delves into the challenges of container freight charges in the seafood import industry.

More and more of what is called “black swans,” either coming from climate change and/or geopolitics, will be intertwined with the container trade, and fishermen are very fiscally conservative, so they will not put all their eggs in one basket. As long as tuna is still processed in Thailand, Vietnam, and Ecuador, Carriers will continue to reign, as they are a much more solid and price-stable platform that only needs a lagoon to anchor….

I quote it below… but read the whole newsletter

EU and US seafood importers suffer from soaring container freight charges

In May 2024, US President Joe Biden announced steep tariff increases would be introduced on a range of products imported from China, including electric vehicles, batteries, semi-conductors and solar cells, effective 1 August.

This drove a rush of exports of these products from China to beat the 1 August deadline, resulting in a shortage of containers and subsequently, a steep increase in freight charges. At the beginning of the year, freight rates for 40-foot freezer containers from Asia to Europe were around USD 2,500-3,000.

By July, rates had reportedly more than doubled or tripled reaching above USD 9,000. In addition, many Asian-based exporters struggled to secure bookings for containers on ships, typically experiencing delays of up to 4-6 weeks. This marks the third event post-COVID to negatively impact freight rates and shipping times.

In early 2023, Panama suffered a severe drought with Gatún Lake, which supplies water to operate Panama Canal’s Atlantic and Pacific locks, experiencing historically low water levels. This resulted in a restriction being placed on vessel traffic passing through Panama Canal from typically 36 crossings to 24 crossings per day in November 2023 (over 30% reduction).

Fewer booking slots available via the Panama Canal resulted in shipping delays, with vessels queuing much longer to transit the canal. According to industry sources, reefer carriers and container ships servicing the tuna industry experienced delays of at least 10 days waiting to pass through Panama Canal.

Ships moving between Asia and Europe via the Suez Canal must pass through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait that borders the Yemeni Coast, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. In November 2023, around the same time Panama Canal transits became more restricted, Yemen-based Houthi militia commenced attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea. Some vessels have opted to avoid the Suez Canal and take the longer and hence, more costly route around Southern Africa, which according to industry sources adds an additional 7-10 days’ transit time.

Delays at the Panama Canal, disruptions to the Red Sea shipping route and now, changes in US tariff rates for China have created a triple-squeeze on global shipping capacity and thus bumped up freight prices. Longer routes put upward pressure on freight rates because of fuel costs.

Also longer voyages require more ships to maintain the same delivery schedule, resulting in fewer available ships to carry products. Ships continuing to route through the Red Sea are also subject to higher risk insurance premiums. In turn, high freight costs places pressure on both seafood exporters and importers, and ultimately, results in higher retail prices when these costs are passed onto consumers.

While the Red Sea issue remains, following increased rainfall and restoration of water levels in Gatún Lake, the Panama Canal Authority announced a return to 35 booking slots for early August 2024. The Biden Administration has also delayed an announcement on final determinations regarding the planned tariff hikes for Chinese goods which were due to come into effect on 1 August.

Pending no further major disruptions, shipping rates are expected to return to more reasonable levels (USD 3,000-3,500), assisted largely by more capacity being added to the global container ship fleet due to new builds.

Raising awareness of climate change by learning its language / October 5, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

I'm always stoked when Pacific Community-SPC chooses one of my pictures to cover any of their publications. My favourite is the Fisheries Bulletin and the latest edition includes a piece I co-wrote with Steven Hare, "Raising awareness of climate change by learning its language perspectives from a participant and an organiser".

This article concerns the Pacific Climate Awareness Pacific Climate Awareness Workshop (CLAW) (CLAW), I have been blogging about recently. Steven, who was one of the key organizers, approached me to write something. I didn’t see any point in being technical about it, but I decided to dive into the more “philosophical” aspect of it and dwell on how I felt about learning and/or conforming to what I know about the impact of climate change in fisheries.

It may not be the usual technical approach to my writing, but I think climate change is a human tragedy, not just a human-driven event…

In any case, here is the full article, and below my contribution

As a participant in many meetings, it would be an understatement to say it was one of the most sobering (and sometimes soul-crushing) workshops I have attended.

The workshop’s premise is very sound: climate change impacts, sea level rise, and temperature are affecting Pacific islands in terms of their existence in the long-term, and economic viability in the medium-term, as climate change affects tuna distribution and abundance.

Much has been discussed over a long time so far. Yet, we are facing an increasing scope of research from climate science that needs to come into fisheries science. This sometimes uses similar terminology with different meanings, which is already confusing for Anglophones and even more so for those who have English as their second, third, or fourth language, as is the case for most people in the Pacific. Hence, this workshop responded to the need to standardise language and concepts while providing the latest information and research on climate change, fisheries, and their interactions, and it did a splendid job at that.

In 1949, the environmental philosopher Aldo Leopold wrote: ”One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” He wasn’t referring to climate change at the time but rather to the importance of preserving natural ecosystems and our ethical responsibility to care for them. If nature does not flourish, neither will we, seems to have been his message … that obviously hasn’t been heard.

Most of my work is operational, centred on increasing reporting accuracy, diminishing the impacts of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and expanding the understanding of fishing fleet logistics and dynamics. These efforts all contribute to the bigger picture of better fisheries management. However, many people scorn those who do this type of work for not being good enough or fast enough, for being political and industry puppets, and so on.

Most of the criticism comes from well-intentioned folks who are very fast at pointing fingers. Still, they may not know how technical the issues can get, mainly when adding other elements around subsidies, social responsibility, and the economic vulnerability of the nations that own the fish against the distant water fishing nations (DWFN) that catch most of the fish.

Yet, people keep pointing fingers at these issues while seemingly forgetting that climate change is a topic we all need to have a much more significant interest in and impact on.

The key learning from the four days is the scope of climate change in fisheries and how overwhelming it is in all aspects … from the growth of individual fish to the macro-oceanic patterns, from variations in seawater chemistry to the literal survival of coastal nations, from adjusting the stock assessment models to pan-Pacific fisheries management.

While we should continue focusing on the operational aspects, we urgently need to address these “new” and ongoing climate change-related variabilities and issues. We need to start thinking outside the box and develop new approaches that look at all the aspects, identify weak points, and try to respond to them. We also need to evaluate what happens within the intermediate periods, which has not been tested, as we tend to focus only on extreme scenarios.

Yet, in comparison, whatever we do right or wrong in fisheries has very little impact on its future if we don’t reduce emissions as a starting point.

A question I often ask myself when thinking about this is how to stay productive in the face of climate change. Pessimism (throwing my hands in the air and saying, “we are doomed!”) is paralysing, and so, for that matter, can optimism (why worry when it will all be okay in the end?). How, then, should I think and act around this?

I personally try to adhere to the philosophical perspective of “meliorism” which is defined as the “doctrine that the world, or society, may be improved and suffering alleviated through rightly directed human effort”, and comes from the Latin “melior”, meaning “better”.

So, rather than wallowing in “a world of wounds,” the “meliorist” in me, likes to believe in the potential for gradual, incremental improvements through human effort. Even if reality and the actions (or, better said, inactions) of most governments today are discouraging, what other options do I have?

A phrase by the public intellectual Noam Chomsky has guided me over the years: “We have two choices: ‘to abandon hope and ensure that the worst will happen’ or ‘to make use of the opportunities that exist and contribute to a better world’. It is not a very difficult choice.”

The climate change studies, and the gloomy figures presented in CLAW can be discouraging. Yet, they need to be interpreted positively: Reducing warming by any amount will move us up the scale and produce a lesser impact on fisheries, so people like me can work better on fisheries monitoring, IUU, etc., and ultimately contribute to better fisheries management.

A framework to evaluate the impracticability exemption of high-seas transhipment in the WCPO / September 23, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Over the years, I wrote extensively about the abuse of the impracticability exemption on high-seas transhipment by longliners in the WCPFC. High Seas Transhipment is to be an exception, yet it seems to have become a norm; in 2023, there were 914 high seas transhipment events reported to the Commission, with 62% of vessels on the Record of Fishing Vessels (RFV) authorised for this activity as can be seen in the Annual Report on Transhipment Reporting.

*Transhipment events in the high seas areas of the WCPFC convention area between 20˚ N and S of the equator. Transhipment ports are shown as grey dots with city, country labels*

Furthermore, this issue is not only of personal interest but also one the Marshall Islands has been very vocal about, presenting an excellent paper on the legal side of it back in 2018 at TCC14. And if that wasn’t enough, HS TS reporting is the main issue we face in terms of IUU, as found in the quantification reports I have been involved with for FFA.

So, as part of our work in partnership with Starboard.nz, we decided to tackle this from an operational perspective to support the work of the WCPFC Transhipment Intersessional Working Group on strengthening the policies and regulations associated with high-seas transhipment in the western central Pacific. The work was funded by FFA's Pacific–European Union Marine Partnership Programme (PEUMP).

The main argument used by the DWFN involved in HS TS is a potential economic burden of in-port transhipment is the extra distance a fishing vessel travels to get to a suitable port instead of transhipping at sea. We test the hypothesis that transhipment at the port is economically not unreasonable. This hypothesis is based on the fact that there are currently 23 ports in the area with infrastructure for transhipment and supplying fishing boats and that the purse seine fleet demonstrates economic viability by transhipping in port while also operating on the high seas.

*Illustration of the journey metrics for an example transhipment event*

We investigated in detail the transhipment activity in the WCPFC high seas areas using ship tracks and vessel details to address the following specific questions:

What is the spatial distribution of high-seas transhipment activity in the WCPFC?
What characteristic travelling patterns can inform the argument's validity of economic hardship?
Who are the central carrier vessels involved in the high-seas transhipments?
Who are the fishing vessels transhipping with the central carriers?

Based on the findings and learnings from our investigation of transhipment activity, we propose a framework to evaluate claims of potential economic hardship of in-port transhipments based on vessel tracks and their comparative proximity between transhipment ports and at-sea transhipment locations.

The WCPFC TCC 20 website has the full report and a summary report for those who want to read less.

Below is the executive summary, but I recommend you read the full report and the operational annexes, which strengthen the call for an actual framework for this problem and/or an independent Regional Observer Program for the region.

I’m pretty proud of the results of this work, not only because of its results but also because it fosters collaboration between a fisheries administration and a trusted technology and information provider, with the funding of regional organisations and the EU as partners.

The entire network of our dataset of transhipments. Blue vessels are on the FFA’s good standing list. The eight central carrier vessels are identified by name in dark grey boxes. Other carriers mentioned in the text are named in light grey boxes. An interactive HTML file that allows exploration of all vessel names, flags and transhipment numbers is provided in the Attachment: transhipment_network.html.

Executive summary

The WCPFC and the WCPF Convention aim to restrict transhipment at sea. The Conservation and Management Measure (CMM) 2009–06 specifies that longliners and other vessels are not allowed to tranship on the high seas unless "it is impracticable for certain vessels… to operate without being able to tranship on the high seas”. Accordingly, WCPFC Members are mandated by CMM 2009–06 to determine if in-port transhipment is impracticable for their relevant vessels and to submit a plan describing the measures being taken to promote transhipment in port.

To establish when transhipment in port is impracticable, the WCPFC has developed a two-part test. First, there must be "significant economic hardship" due to the restriction on high seas transhipment. Second, the ship must alter its historical method of operation in a "significant and substantial" way to comply with the prohibition on transhipment over the high seas. Despite these regulations, CCMs are failing to carry out their responsibilities, and transhipments on the high seas for vessels other than purse seiners have been the norm.

This study was conceived and conducted by the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority (MIMRA) and Starboard Maritime Intelligence to support the work of the WCPFC Transhipment Intersessional Working Group on strengthening the policies and regulations associated with high- seas transhipment in the western central Pacific. The work was funded by FFA's Pacific–European Union Marine Partnership Programme (PEUMP).

This study investigates the economic implications of transhipment activity in the WCPFC high seas areas using analysis of vessel tracks reported via the automated identification system (AIS). Based on FFA analysis, we assume that the critical component for economic hardship is based on the cost of fuel, and that fuel consumption is directly correlated to distances travelled. Arguments based on historical operational practices are more complex to scrutinise as they require a largely qualitative analysis of activity records over many years, and we recommend their investigation for future work.

We found 4,666 potential transhipments between carrier and fishing vessels between May 1, 2020 and November 4, 2023 in the WCPFC high seas regions within 20˚ of the equator. Of these, 1,048 lasted longer than five hours and formed the basis of this analysis. They involved 375 longliners and 27 carrier vessels. The fishing and carrier vessels were flagged to Panama, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Vanuatu. Our network analysis suggests the existence of distinct relationships between fishing and carrier vessels, with more connections between carriers from the same flag states than between differing flag states. In particular, eight carrier vessels are involved in 73% of all transhipments in our dataset and can, therefore, be considered central to the Western Central Pacific Ocean activity.

Targeted analysis of 50 transhipment events resulted in a generalisation of fishing vessel behaviour into three characteristic journey patterns:

Fishing in EEZs of a WCPFC member state, then transhipping on the high seas;
Fishing exclusively, or predominantly, on the high seas, but transiting across member states’ EEZs and passing suitable ports; and
Fishing in remote high seas areas, rarely entering EEZs, and transhipping with passing carrier vessels.

We argue that the impracticability exemption was initially conceived to support vessels historically operating according to the third journey pattern. Our finding of numerous events fitting patterns one and two indicate questionable application of the impracticability exemption for in-port transhipment.

We developed metrics that can be assessed procedurally using computer code to derive general patterns from this dataset that potential policy changes may address. These metrics allow for comparing a vessel's distance to reach the high-seas transhipment location with the shortest distance to a suitable transhipment port. The automated calculation of distances related to fishing and transhipment activities provides several insights that would be hard to gain using manual inspection:

High-seas transhipments involving vessels that fished in relative proximity to ports in PNG (Rabaul, Port Moresby and Kavieng), the Solomon Islands (Noro), and Tonga (Nukualofa) often travel excessively for transhipment.
Eleven carrier vessels, including three central carriers, often received fish that could have been offloaded in port with less or equal travel-related expenditure.
27 longliner vessels made multiple journeys that were more than twice as expensive to reach a carrier vessel on the high seas compared to travelling from the central fishing area to a transhipment port.

The approach we developed in this work to contribute to assessing the economic implications of transhipment can be applied in practice to individual vessels with a high-seas transhipment event. We present step-by-step instructions for practitioners to determine the distance metrics and recommend that this proposed method be applied by WCPFC member states and evaluated for suitability.

We present this approach as a proof of concept for developing a framework to evaluate the impracticability of high-seas transhipments. We fully expect that feedback based on practitioners' experience and discussions with experts and stakeholders will result in modifications and refinements of the method and interpretation of results.

In summary, our findings suggest repeated port avoidance by many vessels licensed to fish in the waters of some FFA members. This suggests that decisions to favour high-seas transhipment over port calls are made for groups of vessels. If true, this practice would be against the transhipment CMM (CMM 2009–06). This challenges any notion that the WCPFC CCM involved in high-seas transhipment carry out the expected due diligence as mandated by CMM 2009–06 to determine if in-port transhipment is impracticable for a particular vessel.

We note that oversight of high-seas transhipments is addressed in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), Inter- American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) and to a certain extent, the Secretariat of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT) with independent regional observer programmes. As such, it is recommended that if vessels choose to fish in areas of the high seas that justify the impracticability exemption in terms of economic hardship and historical method of operation, they should operate under an observer programme similar to those their vessels comply with in all other tuna RFMOs or come to tranship at any port in the region.

We recommend that the TS IWG considers our findings in its measure review and recommends further revisions to the transhipment CMM to WCPFC21, addressing the issues discussed here.

Errors and bias in marine conservation and fisheries literature / August 25, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Fisheries is a complex world, mainly when it becomes multijurisdictional; it is at the crossroads of public policy, industry, food security, geopolitics, and even recreational activities. Yet, unlike other forms of food production, it is heavily anchored (pun intended) on science.

And I’m not arguing here that fisheries do not have problems…. These blogs have pointed out their problems for the past ten years and suggested a few solutions. Good science and fact-based management are fundamental to any hope of fixing or preventing problems from worsening.

However, it's important to remember that science is a human activity, and like all human activities, it is susceptible to errors and potential misuse for personal gain/fame or to push a particular agenda.

I have pointed out peer-reviewed papers that praise the MSC private eco-label, almost all of whose authors are employees of that eco-label. So yeah, it's surely legal to do that… but I'm unsure if it's ethical.

There have also been papers that gained notoriety for catastrophising fisheries or criminalising fishermen, and the press, in the “doom sells” principle, runs with the headlines. The slow process of corrections starts, yet those NEVER get the same attention.

This recent paper by a group of heavyweight scientists involved in debunking these erroneous papers made one out of that process… now can you argue that they are doing it for personal gain or pursuing an agenda? Well, let’s see if this paper gets the same headlines all the others got…

I doubt it. As said, “doom sells… but not helps”

In any case, the paper is Errors and bias in marine conservation and fisheries literature: Their impact on policies and perceptions and as usual, I recommend you read the original (and thanks to Matias B for sharing it)

I quote the parts that resonated the most with me below

ABSTRACT
Sound and effective policies, informed by reliable science, are needed to ensure the sustainable well-being of oceans and marine resources. Scientific publications often influence evolving policies and inform the public, but sometimes contain errors. The prevalence of papers conveying unjustified messages and with the potential to influence public perceptions and policies is concerning. This paper focuses on marine examples that have led to exaggeration of negative impacts on ecosystems, particularly from fisheries, but the criticisms and recommendations also apply more generally. Examples are given of papers on high profile topics that used flawed assumptions or methods, leading to some misleading findings. All examples were eventually followed by published rebuttals. Such papers, often accompanied by media campaigns, can lead to inappropriate policy choices, and other negative outcomes. Science is eventually self-correcting but often too slowly to prevent flawed perceptions and policies. Problems should be corrected before publication. A common weakness in the publication process is inadequate peer-review. Shortcomings at the level of editor can also contribute to the failures. Pressure on scientists to publish, leading to increasing numbers of papers, puts reviewers under more pressure and makes it harder for editors to find suitable ones.

Recommendations to avoid the impact of flawed science on policies are made within the framework of a three-legged stool consisting of:

(1) scientists who strive for objectivity and accuracy;
(2) journals with editors and referees better equipped to guard against unreliable scientific publications; and
(3) transparent and inclusive scientific processes to formulate advice on policies and their implementation.

Incidence of erroneous and potentially misleading publications in the primary literature

2.1. Examples
It would be near impossible to estimate the incidence of substantial errors in peer-reviewed publications. Instead, in this section we illustrate the nature and potential impacts of the problem by presenting some examples of papers with flawed assumptions and methods, erroneous results, and misleading findings (Table 1).

We have used the following criteria in selecting these examples:

They address key issues in fisheries and fisheries management that are relevant to policy and management;
All have been subjected to peer reviewed rebuttals (often in the same primary publication as the flawed paper), which have criticized them for including misleading results and conclusions; and
They have achieved high profiles, sometimes aided by media campaigns.

These examples are likely to have fueled misperceptions on topical issues across a wide audience. They may therefore have contributed to, or have the potential to contribute to, poor policy decisions and actions leading to costly and inappropriate management of fisheries and marine conservation, foregone sustainable benefits, and other negative outcomes.

The criticisms highlighted here are based on the published rebuttals and take account of published responses by the authors of the examples to those rebuttals.

The use of marine protected areas (MPAs) for fisheries management is a contentious policy issue addressed by several papers of concern. Whereas MPAs are important for biodiversity conservation [70–72], a problem with some publications advocating more applications of MPAs as a fishery management tool is that they have been misleading in terms of the benefits and costs of MPAs on fisheries yield. For example, White et al. [73] concluded that MPAs can achieve “….higher profit than attainable under conventional management”, but Hart and Sissenwine [74] questioned some of the assumptions in the paper and pointed out that it potentially misleads the reader by reporting yield in numbers of fish rather than weight or volume as is customary, thereby ignoring the reality that larger fish of a species are usually more valuable than smaller fish.

Three more recent contentious MPA papers are included as examples of problematic scientific papers (Table S1). The first, Cabral et al. [21], estimated that increasing the current global network of no-take MPAs would allow future catches to increase by at least 12 %. Various assumptions made in the paper were challenged by Hilborn [23] and Ovando et al. [24]. Almost a year after publication, the article was retracted when it was shown that the article’s editor had a conflict of interest as a frequent collaborator with several of the authors and that the paper had overestimated the benefits of the MPAs [22].

Sala et al. [25], using the same model as [21], reported that a considerable increase in the protected areas of the oceans would have substantial benefits for biodiversity conservation and carbon storage, and result in improved yields from fisheries. However, Hilborn and Kaiser [29] and Ovando et al. [31] pointed out several flaws in the as- sumptions and analyses, while Hiddink et al. [30] reported that the authors had over-estimated the impacts of trawling on the release of CO2 by several orders of magnitude. The authors of Sala et al. [25] discuss these criticisms of their study and challenge several of them in their responses [26–28] but, importantly, acknowledge the need for further research and analyses to assess the implications of some of the key assumptions of their model for the results and conclusions obtained.

Medoff et al. [32] reported that the establishment in 2016 of the world’s biggest fully protected MPA, in waters around Hawaii, had led to a gradient in CPUE for two species of tuna near the boundary of the reserve. The authors concluded that large MPAs protect migratory fish species and benefit their fisheries. Hilborn and Hampton [33] pointed out that the analyses did not consider the very low catch of tuna species in the area before the MPA was created and that the authors had also failed to take into account the assessed increase of yellowfin tuna in the West Pacific that had started two years before the MPA was created. In addition, Hampton et al. [34] investigated the change in abundance of tunas after the establishment of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, where fishing pressure had been much higher than around Hawaii, and concluded that large protected areas for tunas and other highly migratory fishes were unlikely to increase abundance or benefit fisheries.

In examples on the status of fish stocks, Myers and Worm [15] claimed that the biomass of many large predatory fish had been reduced to about 10 % of their pre-industrial levels, with potentially serious consequences for ecosystems. Walters [42], Hampton et al. [41] and Polacheck [14] contested those findings, reporting that the extent of depletion had been exaggerated through the use of CPUE exclusively, while ignoring other indices and alternative interpretations of early CPUE declines. On the same theme, Baum et al. [43] and Baum and Myers [44] described what they considered to be the collapse and possible extirpation of shark populations in the northwest Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Both papers were criticized by Burgess et al. [46], who argued that the extent of decline had been overstated through the use of limited and inadequate data sets as well as disregard by the authors of other data sets and assessment results.

Worm et al. [35] projected a global collapse of all taxa then being fished by 2048. There is evidence that the suggestion of a collapse by 2048 was included in the primary publication to obtain popular media attention [17]; their projection has been frequently quoted in both the academic and popular media. Several fisheries scientists challenged that result (Supplementary Information), including Branch [38] who pointed out a number of methodological problems with the paper. A working group representing the various different perspectives reconsidered the global status of fisheries using actual stock assessment results and concluded instead that a mixture of sustainably harvested and over-exploited stocks would eventuate [75]. The original paper, with the incorrect forecast of collapse, had been cited 5712 times as of 27 July 2023 while Worm et al. [75], with the revised analyses, had only been cited less than half as many times (citations from Google Scholar).

Pauly et al. [47] suggested that the mean trophic level of catch could be used as an index of ecosystem health and that the mean trophic level of the global catch had declined. This result has been widely promulgated by various NGOs. However, this paper's findings have been criticized for various methodological problems, including underlying assumptions and failing to take increasing catches of lower trophic level fish into account.

Also on the theme of ecosystem impacts, the authors of Gremmillet [51] on interactions between seabirds and fisheries in South Africa were required to submit an Erratum [52] after being criticised for several incorrect and potentially damaging statements on the management and social and economic features of the fishery [53]. Another example of seabird-fishery interactions is Sherley et al. [55], which reported positive effects on penguin reproductive success of experimental closures to pelagic fishing in the neighbourhoods of penguin breeding islands. However, Butterworth [76,77] reported that the method used did not adequately account for pseudo-replication in the data and thereby overestimated the precision of the results. The same methods were subsequently used by Sydeman et al. [56] to argue for continuation of island closures. Both papers were challenged in a rebuttal of the Sydeman et al. paper by Butterworth and Ross-Gillespie [59]. Final resolution of the methods and results came after a panel of six qualified international scientists appointed by the South African Government conducted an intensive on-site review and confirmed that additional analyses were needed to address the pseudo-replication problem [60]. The Panel concluded further that the impacts of fishing closures around the breeding islands were likely to be small compared to the rate of decline of the penguin population, and that additional research was necessary to determine the factors driving the greater part of the decline.

Another well-publicised example is the paper by Kroodsma et al. [62] claiming that fishing activity covered at least 55 % of the world’s oceans, four times the land area covered by agriculture. However, Amoroso et al. [64] pointed out that the coarse spatial scale of the analysis had led to the original paper overestimating the footprints of all fishing and trawling by factors of >10 and >5 respectively.

In one of a series of contentious papers, Munday et al. [65] reported findings that future ocean acidification could seriously disrupt the ability of clownfish larvae to differentiate between cues used in locating suitable sites for settlement. In another paper, Dixsonet al. [66] reported that juvenile corals and fish are attracted by cues from non-fished areas dominated by corals but are repelled by cues from reefs that are fished and dominated by seaweeds. Doubt was raised about the validity of those results by Clark et al. [67] and in other papers, which reported contrasting results, and that the sizes of the effects that had been reported in those studies were highly unlikely. Munday and Dixson et al. [68] challenged the Clark et al. paper but Dixson et al. [66] was retracted by Science in 2022. There are ongoing concerns about a number of the papers in this suite [78].

Each of the examples presented here is unique, and the criticisms raised in rebuttals differ from paper to paper. Nevertheless, they all exhibited the common problem of weaknesses in assumptions, for example the assumption in Cabral et al. [21] and Sala et al. [25] that for some key species in their analyses, the whole global range of the species was connected through larval and adult dispersal [23]. In Worm et al. [35], the definition of a fisheries collapse and the assumption that catch is a proxy for abundance were primary criticisms, in addition to their erroneous projections of estimated trends [38]. Methodological problems in these examples included: inappropriate treatment of spatial structure or dynamics (e.g. Cabral et al. [21], Sala et al. [25], Kroodsma et al. [62]); inconsistent accounting of fishing effort across the different outcomes analyzed (Sala et al. [25]); inadequate interpretation of CPUE information (Myers and Worm [15]); and use of limited and inadequate data sets (Baum et al. [43], Baum and Myers [44]). In Sherley et al. [55], errors in the statistical analyses were identified as a problem [59,60], while in Gremillet et al. [51]], incorrect statements and lack of understanding created a negatively biased impression of aspects of the local small pelagics fishery and its management [52,53].

Impacts of erroneous and potentially misleading papers
For fisheries to be able to make their potential contributions to food security, nutrition and livelihoods in a sustainable way, it is critical to understand what management methods have worked in different ecological, social and economic circumstances and what methods should best be used where improvements are most required [7]. Similarly, reliable information is required on the true impacts of fisheries on en- environments and ecosystems at a resolution enabling effective decisions that provide adequate protection without unnecessary impacts on livelihoods and other benefits of fisheries. The examples discussed here could result in incorrect information and poorly informed scientific conclusions and recommendations that lead to inappropriate management and policy decisions.

Some of these papers also fall under what could be considered scientific neocolonialism, which strives to control development agendas based on a particular world view, and is often detrimental to local communities and other directly affected stakeholders (e.g. [89,90]).

Striving for 30 % no-take or highly protected areas, a global one-size fits all approach, is one such example that has been directly or indirectly supported by some of the published papers presented here. Sydeman et al. [56] provides another instance. In addition to drawing on scientific results that had been criticized on technical grounds and were simultaneously being debated by the relevant South Africa fisheries scientific working group, the authors are all from northern hemisphere institutions and, based on the Acknowledgements, there appears to have been minimal consultation with South African fisheries experts or stakeholders prior to publication of the paper. Nevertheless, referring to a complex issue that directly affects two African countries, South Africa and Namibia, the publication included strong recommendations with ecological, social and economic implications. Editors are not in a position to control practices such as this, but need to be sensitive to the multi-dimensional risks of misleading information that they might presend. They should, at least, ensure that reviewers include local experts with the necessary backgrounds to evaluate all aspects of a paper, although even that can be difficult to achieve.

The media have an important role in amplifying and sharing scientific findings with the wider public and thereby potentially contributing to consideration of this information in policy-making. However, the inadvertent or deliberate spreading of misleading information from scientific publications adds to the potential damage from these documents. Media reports on scientific publications are typically based on press releases prepared by the authors of publications, often in collaboration with media experts. Headlines such as “Protecting 5 % More Of The Ocean Can Increase Fisheries Yield By 20 %” (Forbes12), “Bottom trawling releases as much carbon as air travel, landmark study finds” (The Guardian13) and “Trawling for fish may unleash as much carbon as air travel, study says” (New York Times14), spread false impressions amongst trusting readers. These and other cases of dissemination by the media of misleading results from examples discussed here are provided in Supplementary Table S2.

Recommendations
The previous section contains a number of detailed recommendations arising from this assessment, divided into those aimed at scientists, those relevant to the publishing process, and those directed at the users of science, in this case those involved in the policy-making process.
The overarching recommendation for all those involved in the production and dissemination of scientific results and information is that every effort needs to be made to ensure the reliability of the information produced and used and claimed to be scientific. This group includes scientists, employers and funders of science, publishers and those involved in the publishing process, and the media. Adherence to this is essential for ensuring that trust in science and scientific information is maintained and strengthened amongst all participants in the policy-making process and the public at large.

Journal publishers have ultimate control of the journals, and there-fore of papers published under their names. They need to take the lead towards ensuring the reliability of the papers they publish, giving particular attention to likely high impact papers, especially where policy issues are involved. They have the means and a responsibility to implement the recommendations above relating to peer-review and quality assurance, or to implement whatever other changes are needed to achieve the necessary improvements.

The recommendations for those involved in policy-making centre on implementing procedures to ensure that all information provided under the name of science is scrutinised by a broad group, considered by the stakeholders to be balanced and with the necessary expertise to review the information for accuracy and relevance. The outputs from that process should represent the best available scientific evidence, which should then be made available to all stakeholders in a form that can be readily understood.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals [9], as well as the myriad of other local, national and foundation of reliable, objective and relevant scientific guidance. The challenges to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals are enormous, often involving difficult decisions on trade-offs as countries implement their particular visions and approaches for achieving them. Failures and weaknesses in scientific support can lead to poor choices, and hinder or undermine progress towards them. This reinforces the fundamental responsibility of scientists and publishers of science to do all they can to ensure quality and accuracy.

We consider that the implementation of the recommendations above would contribute to meaningful improvement in the overall quality of scientific publishing and publications, and reduce the risks of publication and dissemination of erroneous research that can lead to inappropriate policy recommendations.

*How do you balance showing the capabilities of the tools (with privacy protection) at your disposal versus counteracting the prevailing press narrative that fisheries are out of control?*

Overview of Tuna Fisheries in the WCPO, Including Economic Conditions - 2023 / August 19, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

As is customary at this time, the WCPFC Regular Session of the Scientific Committee meets in Manila this year. A wealth of papers covering all aspects of the stocks and bycatch status of the species the WCPFC deals with are readily available for exploration.

I always look forward to the Overview of tuna fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, including economic conditions. The 2023 version was compiled by three people I know and for whom I have the ultimate respect: Tiffany Vidal, Peter Williams from SPC, and Thomas Ruaia from FFA.

*Catch value of albacore, bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin in the WCPFC–CA, by longline, pole-and-line, purse seine and other gear types*

The publication shows our current situation regarding fisheries, fishing efforts, and the economic conditions in which they work.

This report should be compulsory reading for everyone who wants to say anything about the fisheries in the WCPO (I’m looking at you NGOs)

Dive into the full text and the great graphs, I just quote the abstract below.

This paper broadly describes the major fisheries in the WCPFC Statistical Area (WCPFC-CA), highlighting activities during the most recent calendar year (2023) and covering the most recent summary of catch estimates by gear and species.

The provisional total WCPFC–CA tuna catch for 2023 was estimated at 2,630,858 mt, slightly lower than the 2022 level (2,702,099 mt) and around 342,728 mt lower than the record catch in 2019 (2,973,586 mt). The WCPFC–CA tuna catch (2,630,858 mt) for 2023 represented 79% of the total Pacific Ocean tuna catch of 3,310,318 mt, and 52% of the global tuna catch (the provisional estimate for 2023 is 5,027,799 mt), noting that unlike other oceans, over 80% of the WCPFC–CA tuna catch occurs in the waters of coastal states.

The 2023 WCPFC–CA catch of skipjack (1,647,702 mt – 63% of the total catch) was around 397,077 mt lower than the record in 2019 (2,044,779 mt). The WCPFC–CA yellowfin catch for 2023 (746,913 mt – 28%) was a decrease of 7,457 mt from the record 2021 catch (754,370 mt), noting that 2023 yellowfin catches are the second highest on record. The recent high catches are partially due to the high catch levels from the ‘other’ category (primarily small-scale fisheries in Indonesia).

The WCPFC–CA bigeye catch for 2023 (140,309 mt – 5%) was again one of the lowest of the time series, but relatively consistent with the catch levels from the previous two years. The 2023 WCPFC–CA albacore catch (94,934 mt – 4%) was around 2,741 mt higher than in 2022, but catches from 2021-2023 are the lowest on record since 1997. The provisional South Pacific albacore catch in 2023 was 67,751 mt; however, this estimate is expected to increase with the addition of catches from the Eastern Pacific Ocean, which have not yet been received.

The provisional 2023 purse seine catch of 1,843,100 mt was around 257,000 mt lower than the record catch in 2019 (2,100,135 mt). With respect to species specific purse seine catches, skipjack (1,377,830 mt: 75% of the catch) was slightly below the recent 10-year average, yellowfin tuna (408,281 mt; 22% of the total purse seine tuna catch) was around 92,000 mt lower than the record catch in 2017 (500,506 mt) and the fourth highest annual catch on record, the provisional catch estimate for bigeye tuna for 2023 (56,094 mt) was about 8,500 mt lower than the 2022 catch and a only a slight increase over the notably low purse seine bigeye tuna catch in 2019 (52,081 mt). The increased bigeye tuna catches since 2020 appears to be related to a higher number of associated sets.

The provisional 2023 pole-and-line catch (143,431 mt) is the lowest annual catch since the early- 1960s, due to reduced catches in the Japanese fishery, although we note as in previous years the provisional nature of the estimates at this stage

The provisional WCPFC–CA longline catch (234,894 mt) for 2023 remains lower than the average over the previous decade but a slight increase from 2022 (243,115 mt). The bigeye component of the longline fishery (56,203 mt) was similar to the 2022 catch level - which are some of the lowest catches reported since the mid-1980s. Both albacore and yellowfin catches were higher in 2023 than in 2022.

The 2023 South Pacific troll albacore catch (1,192 mt) was the second lowest catch level since 1980 (744 mt were reported in 1983), largely owing to a contraction in NZ’s troll fleet operating in the region. The New Zealand troll fleet (94 vessels catching 864 mt in 2023) and the United States troll fleet (10 vessels catching 328 mt in 2023) accounted for all of the 2023 albacore troll catch, although minor contributions also come from the Canadian, the Cook Islands and French Polynesian fleets when their fleets are active in this fishery

In 2023, market prices for purse seine-caught products increased. Thai imports averaged $1,773/mt, marking an 8% increase from 2022, while Yaizu prices increased by 12% to $1,923/mt.

For the southern longline fishery, 2023 saw a positive trend with the index approaching its 20-year average, supported by higher catch rates and lower fuel prices. Similarly, the economic conditions for the tropical longline fishery improved, nearing the 20-year average, driven by increased catch rates and a decrease in fuel prices.

The EU Catch Certificate and its changes under the new CATCH System / August 14, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Central to the effectiveness of the EU IUU regulation is the Catch Certificate (CC), a document not easy to handle, so here I will try to “reverse engineer” the ways each section is being handled by the different countries and the CA in the MS that receive them, to clarify its use

The Regulation (EU) 2023/2842 that underpins the use of CATCH, proposed changes in the content of the CC, and processing statement to

To address loopholes in key data elements relevant for traceability in the old CC
Incorporate key data related to fishing and to tracing trade flows
To ensure consistency of data collected
To ensure the same traceability data requirements for the same commodities in all cases.

While the changes are effective from 10 January 2026, “old” catch certificates and documents (those created and validated before 10 January 2026) will be admissible for an additional 24 months from the date of application (if submitted through CATCH).

The changes in each section of the Catch Certificate

There is no "standard understanding" of the interpretation of the CCS contents, and DG MARE does not interfere with the interpretation by EU MS.

This blog is based on my experience with the “old” certificate and the information currently available on the “new” certificate.

This part of the guide aims to facilitate the understanding of the different sections of the CC by analysing them individually,

The “new” information requirements and changes are in light blue type, and new areas in the certificate have a light blue background, while the “old” ones without change maintain the white background.

Section 1

This requires the details of the authority entrusted for this job (usually the fisheries authority) of the flag state. The authority must be “notified” by DG MARE, and it is assumed that under the new system, those authorities in exporting countries may access these “notification requirements” by becoming registered users of CATCH.

However, there is a “catch 22” type situation (pun intended) between the requirements from the EU Catch Certification (CCS) and the Health Certification since some Flag States, while having a fisheries body, lack the EU DG SANTE's authorisation from a sanitary perspective to export. Without this, raw products sourced from such vessels will remain ineligible and, as such, are not part of DG SANTE’s TRACES system (in which CATCH is based).

So, only the countries approved from a sanitary perspective will be “notified”, even if they comply with all the “fisheries elements” of the CCS. This issue will become evident in the analysis of Section 7

The “new” Section 1 differs from the old in naming itself the European Union Catch Certificate to avoid confusion.

Regarding the details above, it is assumed that the CA of the vessel flag State is in charge of managing a unique consecutive numbering system for each cert. The country decides the complexity and structure of this system.

While not listed, it is sensible for the CA of the vessel Flag State to have a dedicated e-mail contact.

Section 2

The new elements in this section aim to increase the details of the vessel's identification and add the gear used for harvesting the fish in the consignment.

The fishing gear code should be under FAO’s international Standard statistical classification of Fishing Gear (ISSCFG)[1]

However, the changes do not address the old system's issues.

Many vessels and landings in one consignment
The CC is based on the volumes in the consignment exported, and the consignment could consist of various landings of various vessels; hence, there could be 20+ vessels in one consignment in the paper system; there was no chance to put more than 2-3 vessels in this section.
FFA members “invented” Annex B to add more vessels; hence, we assume that the new system may allow the addition of as many vessels as necessary for the consignment.

No role for coastal States
The fishing licence # and validity in the certificate seem to refer to the flag state license and not to the coastal state where the vessels may be operating. Yet the legality of the catch is associated with the conditions imposed by the coastal state and not only by the flag state. Furthermore, the validity may differ (yearly for the flag state and monthly for the coastal state), so it gets complicated, and the CCS remains silent on this. Based on this, the numbering of the licence and validity of the vessel by the flag state may not have any inference with the legality of the catch.

Charter vessels
As discussed, the issuing and validating of the catch certificate is done by the flag state fisheries authority. Yet, a significant part of the fishing world works on principles of “charter”; hence, vessels flagged in country “A” are based and operate in country “B” under its legislation and controls. Chances are that flag state “A” may not have seen that vessel in years and may not even know where it is, but under flag state responsibility is the flag state (A) that had to validate the catch certificates of the vessels that operate in country B.

So, in an ideal world, country “A” would establish an MoU with the Coastal States where the vessels operate and/or with the Port State where the fish is landed/transhipment and/or with the processing state where the fish is processed (note that all this can happen in one country or different ones). Once these MoUs are in place, a robust information-sharing system can be established, enabling the flag state to provide the required “official assurances” during validations.

In the real world, most of the countries utilising charter vessels are not particularly responsible in terms of fishing compliance. Hence, they don’t give much attention to these issues (in fact, very few such MoUs are in place).

While initially, this was designed as a “Catch certificate” (hence certified the fish caught at the time of landing), it has always been used as an “export certificate” only for the fish being exported to the EU, in many cases not from processors based in the flag state of the harvesting vessel.

So this becomes a problem for the processors and exporters in the countries that process the fish being exported to the EU, as they depend on the willingness and efficiency of the flag state authority, even more so if the flag state CA does not use CATCH.

Sections 3 and 4

The changes in these sections aim to increase the available catch area and date information and clarify the issues of the weights to be presented in the CC, which was a matter of much confusion in the old one.

The catch area FAO area(s) refers to FAO’s statistical catch areas[2]; furthermore, the information should include the identification of the exclusive economic zone(s) and/or high seas and where the catches took place.

The changes do not address fully some of the old system's issues and remain somewhat mixed and complicated.

Section 4 relates more to Section 2 in the function of the conditions under which the vessel operates and catches fish; hence, it is analysed first.

It refers to the applicable Conservation and Management Measures (CMMs) applicable to the vessels and area of catches; this has been a confusing aspect, as an example; a vessel from a WCPFC member fishing in the area may be under the obligations of over dozens of CMMs[3] that are incorporated into the fag state legislation (high seas permits, conditions related to leaving the flag state EEZ, observers, FADs, and all other CMMs applicable to the WCPFC in which that vessel operates) and/or the measures imposed by the coastal state (permit # and conditions, etc) which as discussed above seems absent.

In any case, it only relates to the relevant RFMO convention area(s), so one assumes that naming the WCPFC is sufficient.

Section 3.

Product Description: The product is described by using the species name, and the product code is the customs code used in the nomenclature implemented by the third country (however in reality, it is the one that the client requested) in the sections below. However, some countries ask for the product's generic name to be listed (i.e. Tuna loins).

Catch dates and areas: Dates of catch can be interpreted as the actual dates of fishing. However, a vessel may not catch every day, so certainty is required regarding whether this constitutes each active fishing date, the time between the 1st fishing operation (i.e. trawl, set, hook in the water, etc.) and the last one. This could also be from port departure to return or from empty hold to full hold, depending on how the vessel operates.

This is not defined; hence it is potentially in the hands of the operators that complete this section to choose what they want, or it may also be subject to a directive from the fisheries authority defining what is required.

Weights: The clarifications for this section, as explained in DG MARE’s FAQ of May 2024[4], are very welcomed since the ones in the older system were complex and somewhat confusing. Question 48 of that document states

“Estimated weight to be landed in kg” - this box will be used in direct landings of fishery products in the EU. It will contain data based on the fishing logbook.
“Net catch weight in kg” - this box will be used in case of landings in third countries. It will contain data after completion of landing relevant for the products intended to be exported to the EU.
“Verified weight landed (net catch weight in kg)” - this box will be used in case of landings having taken place under the supervision of an authority.

What often used to happen is that when fish from a vessel flagged in country “A” was unloaded in country “B” for processing, the whole volume of fish landed can be quoted in the “estimated” box. So now it is advised that this volume only applies to fish landed in the EU.

The one that seems applicable to landing in 3rd countries is the “Net Weight”, the note does not go into details. Still, it would be great to assume this for the full landing. Then, the processing statement provides the details of the processed volume out of the landed, and the CATCH system keeps track of this for each landing of each vessel in the CC and incorporates some standard conversion factors/yields to keep subtracting the volumes processed of the volume landed until the full net volume is exhausted.

No details are provided regarding the verified weight landed, yet one is to assume that this could apply to the port State authority if fish is landed in a country other than the flag state.

While the present understanding is a step forward from the old one, DG MARE will need to clarify some aspects further.

Section 5

The changes here add the option of a licensee holder since masters were usually unavailable to sign.

While is ideal to make the master responsible for the fish caught, the certificate is often raised when the product is ready to be exported, which usually means processed (not for the product caught).

This may happen in a different country and months after the vessel lands, and therefore, the master will not be able to sign the document.

In theory, the fisheries authorities should validate this. Yet, most operators have scans of the skipper’s signatures available or add the concept of “authorised company representative” or something similar to the paper certificates.

Section 6

Transhipments at sea are heavily regulated worldwide and good reasons exist for this.

Transhipments are permitted in various fisheries and under the fishing rules of the flag state and/or RFMO, and/or coastal state.

Nevertheless, it is the Flag state’s responsibility to attest to the legality of transhipment at sea. Hence, the flag states should have processes and instruments to ensure the operations are legal and no underreporting occurs.

Some difficulties apply here in addition to the other elements of the CC. The paperwork may be completed soon after the event and handled by the processors rather than the fishers. So, in this case, how does the flag state know and validate the identity (and signature) of both masters?

While there is no definition of “transhipment at sea” it is almost obvious that it happens outside any port region, and many states have not defined the “format” in which the transhipment information is to be supplied.

Examples have been cited where the CC declares two dates and positions (start and finish of the transhipment). This may suggest that there were two transhipments instead of one.

Indeed, there could also be two consecutive transhipments by the same vessels separated by a few days.

Thus, it is important that the validation authority clearly states how they require the information to be presented.

Section 7

The changes here address a substantial failure of the old system, the lack of a section for landings and an absence of Ports State Measures in the CCS.

Furthermore, the EU is a party to PSMA and actively participates in the FAO Technical Consultation, which elaborated the 2022 Guidelines for Transshipment and agreed to the definition of transhipment and landing.

The new form correctly identifies the ports the dates of transhipment or landing and the details of the vessels receiving transport in case of transhipments.

In any case, the changes do not address some of the old system's issues and remain complex and somewhat confusing.

While not clearly explained in the regulations or manuals, this is the only part of the CC that requires the signature from the Port State instead of the Flag State.

When vessels flagged in Country “A” tranship or land at a port in Country “B”. Country “A” is responsible for the validation of the CC, but Country “B “is responsible for authorizing the transhipment or landing under PSM.

The transhipment or landing can occur before the CC certificates are raised and validated (in many cases, there is still no firm buyer for the fish) or because the fish has not been landed or processed at its destination, which may or may not be the Flag State.

This a difficulty for the Port State as under the paper system, if they were to sign Section 7 at the time of the transhipment or landing, they'll sign an empty CC, unless the flag state is really “onto it” an able to provide a validated CC based on reliable estimates prior the transhipment (there is no evidence of this ever being the case).

Alternatively, they need to keep the records of the transhipment authorization on file until the processors of the fish that was transhipped/landed request the CC from the Flag State, who can then issue and validate the CC, which can then go to the Port State for section 7 signature.

As it is now, the operational side of section 7 requires either jeopardy from the Flag State or from the Port State.

It's only hope that under CATCH, the communication between the flag state and port state may be working over the same CC initiated by the flag State.

As discussed before, CATCH can incorporate countries that are not authorised from the sanitary perspective, something it cannot presently do on TRACES.

Section 8

There are no changes to this section, that is normally completed by the processor that fills Section 5, as the CC is prepared by the processors (which, as already discussed defeats the purpose of a catch certification), so in general terms there are no issues with this section.

Section 9

This section, which refers to the authority in charge of Section 1, has not been changed. However, a name and position are required.

Initially, it was believed that the details should be communicated to DG MARE. Yet the CC is evaluated by the CA of the EU MS, and there is no centralized system to verify (or not) the details of the CC. It is, therefore, up to the EU member state to decide whether to inform DG MARE.

Section 10

There are no changes to this section which is a rather illogic part of the certificate which could just be the appendix (transport details) or simply not referred to.

The “new” transport details appendix does, however, incorporate changes that refer to the documentation details, such as the CMR (Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road), the inclusion of a port of destination, and the instruction that in the case of use of multiple modes of transport or multiple shipments, the information related to the transport has to be provided for each mode of transport used for each.

The appendix collects the information related to the transport details of the fishery products from the third country, having validated the catch certificate to the next destination, an EU Member State in case of direct importation or an intermediate country in case of indirect importation to the EU.

Yet, as has been seen under part 7, if a transhipment in port happens in between vessels where the Port State is the Flag State, then this can also be construed as having the carrier as the de facto transport vessel. In this case, the carrier's details will be entered in this section.

There are also instances where the transhipment details being recorded in section 7 are the same details of the carrier being repeated in this section of transport details.

Acceptance of this practice may be one of those issues that is dependent of the practices of the authorities of importing EU MS at the time the consignment enters the country.

Processing Statement

The processing statement, as required by Annex IV of the IUU Regulation, has gone through a full change of understanding.

While it used to be only required for fish processed under a foreign catch certificate in a 3rd country, it will now be required even in cases where the processing of the product takes place in the same country where the flag of the fishing vessel.

From now on, processing statements will be required for ALL processed fishery products imported in the EU, regardless of where the processing has taken place (in the flag State or in another non-EU country).

This means that processing statements should also be endorsed in cases where the flag State of the fishing vessels that caught the fish and the country where the processing operation occurred are the same.

In addition, the template laid down in Annex IV will include the obligation to apply a unique number provided by the authorities endorsing the statement (in case of direct use of CATCH, the system can generate such a unique number directly).

Importantly, the processing statement should refer to the related catch certificates, including the quantity of fish used as raw material to produce the processed products to be exported to the EU. As discussed before, hopefully, this is checked in terms of the standard yields for the type of processing.

There are no significant issues regarding this document. From the practical and management point of view, it is important for the CA of the processing state that validates this document to maintain a register of processing statements signed with a description of species, volumes and destiny.

A Non-Manipulation Statement?

The legislation did not stipulate a “non-manipulation statement”, but it stated that:

In order to import fishery products constituting one single consignment, transported in the same form to the EU from a 3rd country other than the flag State, the importer shall submit to the authorities of the Member States of importation:

the catch certificate(s) validated by the flag State; and
documented evidence that the fishery products did not undergo operations other than unloading, reloading or any operation designed to preserve them in good and genuine condition, and remained under the surveillance of the competent authorities in that third country.

Documented evidence shall be provided by means of:

where appropriate, the single transport document
A document issued by the competent authorities of that third country:
- giving an exact description of the fishery products, the dates of unloading and reloading of the products and, where applicable, the names of the ships or the other means of transport used and
- an indication of the conditions under which the fishery products remained in that third country.

Hence, some FFA members developed a ‘Non-Processing Statement” to cover all these issues and assist with their “fish accountancy”. An example follows:

Under the new system, there would be an official template for this document (not yet published)

Annex B or attachment to Catch Certificate

This form was not published in the original legislation; hence, it is not a compulsory form. In a note published by the EU on their website in July 2010, the EU welcomed the use of it for domestic products (i.e. products caught by the flag state vessels in this case). They do not standardise the contents. Hence, countries can adapt it to reflect their systems and the outcome based on traceability.

The EU noted: "Discussions are presently carried out with other third countries to provide similar information regarding domestic processing activities. The Commission welcomes the support received from third countries and their positive approach to implement the IUU Regulation". Hence, the third countries should use this to their advantage.

The certificate itself is still filled as usual, but then sections 2 and 3 will refer to the attachment or Annex B.

This form is handy when the consignment is made from various landings of various vessels (as is common in canneries), as the form can replace otherwise 30 “individual” certificates.

It is easier to set up the information in a readable way, including the volumes landed, the volumes processed, and the volumes exported. The Container number where that product is stored for dispatch, hence the whole traceability of the product is “visible” in one document; an example is presented below:

As discussed for Section 2 of the CC, it will depend on the facilities under the new CATCH system to add many vessels if applicable.

So yeah… one big thing is the processing statements change,… something that could have been done 14 years ago already. However, I see the capabilities of CATCH to do “fish accountancy” and check when a vessel landing is exhausted even with high yield margins during processing, and then see how much of the fish flows into the EU diminish… that is the ultimate test of the effectiveness wich so far hasn’t shown much in terms of impact in trade.

[1] https://www.fao.org/fishery/en/knowledgebase/139

[2] https://fish-commercial-names.ec.europa.eu/fish-names/fishing-areas_en

[3] https://cmm.wcpfc.int

[4] https://oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu/document/download/4b92c8f5-9f96-46ec-babc-3bc880ff4ad3_en?filename=FAQ-amendment-IUU-Regulation_en.pdf&prefLang=fr

Data and digital technology challenges for maritime human rights concerns / August 6, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

As I dug deep last year into a (yet-to-be-published) study for the ILO on using Electronic Monitoring (EM) for labour rights issues at sea from an operational perspective, I could foresee the broader-picture challenges associated with EM in that context.

So I was pretty pleased to find out that this paper, as the issue was tackled not by fisheries people but by some very clever people from the Alan Turing Institute in London who work on the intersection of human rights, social issues, data, technology, and AI… which must a quite remarkable space to work… as each of them is already massive. (I would love to know more, and ideally work with them)

And I was even happier to read the following sentence.

Regarding maritime human rights, we argue that prioritising large-scale, top-down monitoring to collect larger datasets or market more tech solutions is not the best way for data and technology to contribute to transparency and accountability. Instead, we advocate for deeper engagement with affected communities.

This aligns very much with my advice on the ILO paper… yes… is potentially possible, and we will need to adapt some of the tools we already have for EM for IUU and fisheries management and develop newer ones besides the issues around governance roles and responsibilities… yet still an “ambulance a the bottom of the cliff”… the right thing is to prevent the problems to happen by engagement and economic penalties on the worst performing flag states… which are legally responsible on what happened on board.

Basically... tech may help… but Tech won’t save us! (a great podcast, by the way)

The paper reviews many findings from studies on fisheries (one of which I am a co-author) and maritime human rights investigations, emphasising the importance of a comprehensive approach combining traditional investigative methods with innovative technological solutions. It advocates for community empowerment, ethical data practices, and the integration of digital tools while upholding ethical standards and ensuring contextual specificity in tools. And that is something I’ll totally agree with.

In any case, and a usual… I recommend you read the original Trouble at Sea: Data and digital technology challenges for maritime human rights concerns. Is a great paper

I quote below the abstract and conclusions.

ABSTRACT
Recent years have revealed the severity and scale of human rights abuses at sea. Yet maritime human rights investigations remain challenging due to an array of difficulties, including physical inaccessibility and a complex legal environment. Improving the availability of data has been framed as a solution that will enhance transparency in marine-related activities and improve accountability for rights violations. Such enthusiasm has fuelled the development of technological solutions promising to identify abuses and safeguard vulnerable individuals. However, these efforts clash with concerns over the use of data and technology in human rights practice. In the context of such tensions, this paper studies how data and technology have been integrated within investigations into rights abuses at sea. We examine the challenges posed by transparency, accountability, and fairness regarding communities affected by rights violations. We ask: do data, and digital technologies offer effective means for helping to expose rights abuses and hold malicious actors accountable? Or do they introduce new threats to autonomy, privacy, and dignity? We present empirical research based on qualitative engagements with expert practitioners. We find:

an increased availability of datasets did not necessarily prevent harm or improve safeguarding for vulnerable people;
many tech solutions were detached from affected individuals’ lived experiences and appeared not to meet communities’ needs;
uses of data and technology could introduce or aggravate risks to fairness and accountability within human rights investigations.

We contribute a much-needed reflection on the actual implications of the use of data and techno- logical tools for communities affected by human rights violations. Regarding maritime human rights, we argue that prioritising large- scale, top-down monitoring to collect larger datasets or market more tech solutions is not the best way for data and technology to contribute to transparency and accountability. Instead, we advocate for deeper engagement with affected communities.

CONCLUSION
Oceans are a critical arena in global efforts to promote human rights. Increasing attention paid to maritime human rights issues has exposed the scale of the problems at hand. These discoveries have been driven, in part, by advances in data and the technology used to analyse it.

Like other areas of human rights practice, datafication appears to have introduced new skill sets, epistemologies, and professions into the space.

But despite the degree of interest in the academic literature in leveraging various data sources and developing technical solutions to the problem of challenging human rights abuses at sea, our research indicates these have not necessarily made marine spaces more transparent, increased the accountability of malicious actors, or improved safeguarding for vulnerable individuals.

Meanwhile, we observed a familiar series of concerns regarding data-driven technical interventions: they were said to introduce errors, contribute to biases, and lead to misinterpretations, which could all reduce investigations’ efficacy and feed unfair disparities in outcomes.

They could encourage technological solutionism, crowd the market for tools, and divert resources from where they were most needed. This misalignment—between affected communities’ needs and technology developers’ efforts—was spurred by a socio-technical environment where investments in ‘high tech’ solutions and their providers have been privileged.

We argue the path for data and technology to contribute to fairness, transparency, and accountability within efforts to challenge maritime human rights abuses is not through further investment in large-scale, top-down monitoring to collect larger datasets. Nor is it through pursuing more sophisticated tech solutions in a crowded market where existing products may not be meeting users’ needs. Instead, the field demands deep, localised engagement that supports affected communities to exercise their own agency. In a resource-constrained environment battling against severe harm to individuals and communities, the stakes of under-utilising or misplacing resources are high.

Our findings (Table 3) are likely to be echoed in other human rights fields and in the broader ‘tech for good’ sector. In particular, we suggest the needs, difficulties, and concerns that practitioners raised about investigating maritime incidents will be relevant to human rights investigative work in contexts where data is scarce and/or of low quality. These might include work to identify labour exploitation on land; investigations in areas with limited internet access or available data; and initiatives seeking to document events during armed conflict.

A deed dive into the South Korean Carriers generalised FADs setting activities in the WCPO / July 30, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Beyond the initial furore around the Sun Flower 7, I have occasionally posted on the behaviour of Korean Carriers acting as fishing boasts when setting FADs without any Observer’s supervision outside the EEZs of FFA/PNA members since the WCPFC is the only tuna RFMO that does not have an independent observer programme on carriers (I have written on this before).

But honestly, I barely have time to write these blogs, even less to do a deep dive (for free) into how generalised (and entrenched) the behaviour is among carriers that have South Korea as a country of beneficial ownership.

Yet, thankfully, Megan Charley from Starboard did so in this excellent case study published on the Starboard website. Her credentials and capacity for the job are impeccable. She was an intelligence officer with the Australian Defence Force and Border Security, then went to AFMA. Now she is with Starboard; she does not leave stones unturned and asks the right questions.

*Carrier AIS track history including FAD setting activity across the Kiribati and Tuvalu EEZs* *over 2 years, coinciding with favourable tuna fishing grounds. This figure has a chlorophyll-a environmental layer applied through the Starboard map layers, showing higher concentrations of* *chlorophyll-a* *in darker shades of green*.
*The source is the linked study*

So when she reached out to me with this study, I was more than happy to help… even if I think that what I mostly did was to respond with more questions and endless blogs!

So, this case study covers almost everything that is know about the generalised FADs setting activities in the WCPO by carriers belonging to a closely interconnected group of South Korean beneficial owners.

Identified relationships between 4 major companies operating South Korean (including those flagged to other countries such as Panama and Kiribati) fish carriers, purse seine support carriers, purse seine fishing vessels, and other fishing vessels.
The source is the linked study

Below, I quote the “conclusions” in the form of “observations” compiled as a result of her case study/analysis for further consideration, but please refer to the original. It is very well illustrated and analyses vessel-by-vessel activity and ownership.

Carrier vessels should be closely monitored during the current closure period of 1 July–15 August 2024, in particular for more subtle manoeuvres that could indicate FAD setting.
Requests to flag-states or the WCPFC Secretariat for their additional FAD closure months (or CNM restrictions on carrier FAD setting in general) can be made by authorised enforcement agencies during relevant operations to analyse and report on any potential FAD setting activity.
Consideration for the additional flag-specified closure periods being made public for more effective monitoring and compliance efforts.
Consideration for further analysis outside of closure periods on the amount of FADs potentially being released and not recovered by carrier vessels, and whether this constitutes illegal dumping under international law.
Whether the role and classification of carriers as fishing vessels under the WCPFC Convention Text and ancillary CMMs should be reviewed, to determine whether fishing activities such as FAD setting should be allowed for carrier vessels (and if so, whether it should be monitored by observers).
Improved information sharing between flag-states and port-states for effective collaboration and implementation of PSM controls to enable the denial of port entry for more IUU vessels and overarching companies.

CC in Fisheries #8: Data Collection and Modelling for Climate Scenarios / July 19, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Continuing with my Climate Change in Fisheries Series (CCFS), here is my 8th on Incorporating climate scenarios in fisheries research.

For a few years now, Simon Nicol from SPC has been a reference point for all things tuna and climate change in the region. He is the tip of most of the present work in this area, and as expected, his presentation on data collection and modelling for climate scenarios was very interesting.

The subjects he covered included, among others, the importance of collecting and using climate-related data for fisheries modelling, data we aren’t yet collecting but should be, and advanced warning systems. The presenter discussed the importance of data collection in tuna fisheries management, emphasising the need for robust indicators and vulnerability analyses to prioritise areas for investment. It highlighted the need for transitioning from basin-scale to local or national-scale monitoring and improving the resolution of ocean models for more detailed economic analysis. The presentation stressed the need for proactive integration of climate impacts into tuna fisheries management; establishing baselines and understanding population structures to better manage tuna resources; and upskilling and regional autonomy.

Data collection and modelling in the context of climate change was emphasized and the importance of observations to establish baselines and quantify change was stressed as was the need for robust indicators in the areas of biology, distributions and oceanography. There is a need for vulnerability analyses to prioritise areas for investment data collection is required to identify the impacts of climate change.

The need for different types of data and information to make strategic decisions and forecasts for the upcoming year was discussed. There is a need to transition from basin-scale to local or national-scale monitoring and to improve the resolution of ocean models for more detailed economic analysis. This underscores the importance of understanding biomass changes in specific areas. The New Zealand government is funding a project to build tools to assist our understanding of the dynamics at a EEZ scale.

Establishing baselines and understanding population structures to better manage tuna resources is required. There is also a need for upskilling scientists and managers within the region and developing regional autonomy. Furthermore, scaling up fisheries and ocean monitoring is needed. We need high-resolution models to capture finer scale processes and accurately estimate biomass within exclusive economic zones. To achieve this, we need to scale up e-reporting and identify gaps in ocean data, and find future partnerships to fill these gaps.

Ocean monitoring is required but there are challenges in obtaining precise data, particularly at lower trophic levels. There are a limited number of observation tools and is a need to balance physical parameters and biological components. There are advantages in using genomics data for modelling fish populations. Genomics can provide a cleaner data set, free from assumptions associated with standard tagging data, and can estimate absolute abundance and spawning potential.

Discussion

Data collection of meteorological data along a ships track is possible, however, acoustic data is problematic. Not all vessels are good for collecting useable acoustic data. The biggest challenge, however, is the requirement for a research permit (according to UNCLOS) to do any biological work. A discussion is therefore needed as to how this could work and how it can be permitted. This will not really be a problem if we know what it is that we wanted to do, however, it can’t be rolled out without some agreement/permitting in place.

The tuna fisheries harvest strategy process is currently under development. Within this framework, some of the biological variability is captured by the biological data going into the model. If that underlying biology changes then the model will need to be updated. If that change is extreme, then this may need to take place through the exceptional circumstance clause. At the time the change is noticed a decision needs to be made as to whether it is “normal” and/or consistent between consecutive years; or an outlier; or a change in state that is becoming commonplace. If that variable is influential within the model, then a model change may be required. Forecasting tuna distribution and size can be predicted by looking at the past data to predict the future conditions, and then modelling what that change may look like in the future.

Models currently are large in the scale concerning the area that they can evaluate and a downscaling exercise is underway. The time frame for starting a downscaling exercise of the oceanographic models is known. Models that are being optimised for the best fit for the downscaling to EEZ scale to evaluate impacts will be completed within 6-12 months. For the wider climate models, a 4-5 year time horizon is required if we use an ensemble approach for the 4 tuna models at a 1-degree resolution.

SPC is closer to developing models based on genetics and close kin scalers of abundance. It is estimated that for albacore, reliable results will be available in 12 months and calibrated epigenetics for all four tunas is expected by August 2024. But skipjack is problematic as the computing power is too restrictive currently, the population is too big and this work may take another 5-6 years to be able to develop a fully realised model.

CC in Fisheries #7: Climate-Informed Fisheries Management Strategies / July 7, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Continuing with my Climate Change in Fisheries Series (CCFS), here is my 7th on Incorporating climate scenarios in fisheries research.

Marina Abas from the FFA delivered this presentation on climate-informed fisheries management strategies.

Like me, she started her career in Argentina and now works in the Pacific. She has also become a bit like a “niece” to me. She is part of a diverse group of people in the region that I try to support professionally and as humans for various reasons, and I think they are good sorts.

Her presentation aimed to delve into managing climate-related risks to fisheries by developing adaptation strategies that will help build resilience in the sector.

The IPCC first introduced the climate change risk assessment framework, which evaluates risk by considering hazards, exposure, and vulnerability. Hazards encompass climate-related impacts like sea level rise, ocean acidification and storm intensification. Exposure involves the presence of people, livelihoods, species, ecosystems and assets in areas susceptible to adverse effects. Vulnerability, comprising sensitivity and adaptive capacity and gauges the predisposition of communities to hazards. Sensitivity in fisheries is assessed based on dependence, while adaptive capacity assesses the ability to cope and implement preventive measures against climate change impacts. This framework aids in understanding the aspects that contribute most to risks and working on strategies to manage those climate change-related risks in various contexts, including fisheries.

An introduction to climate-resilient fisheries management approaches already in use discussed how management strategies can be used as climate change adaptation strategies. Four foundations for climate-resilient fisheries were introduced: effective fisheries management systems, strong participatory processes, precautionary systems that deal with uncertainty and risks, and adaptive fishery management systems.

Discussion

Each sector can start by doing its part to cooperate and work together as partners when developing adaptive strategies, as social communities and ecosystems are linked and will impact each other in a changing climate. Many of the approaches described are already in place, but they need to be considered through a climate lens. We can manage for the change in the fisheries, but how we address the problems in the future and when we begin talking about loss and damage and rights to resources that have moved spatially require discussion.

To address these new issues, we will need to start thinking outside the box and develop new approaches. We will need to look at all the aspects, identify weak points, and try to respond to them. Managers, scientists, and communities working together will need to address this. We also need to evaluate what happens within the intermediate periods, which has not been tested as we tend to focus on the extreme scenarios only.

When stakeholders consider the overall risk to the stock, the community will need to assess the hazards within a risk assessment framework e.g. risks to vessel (e.g. vessels fishing in increasingly stormy seas) vs a stock moving outside of the area so that we can rank risks/hazards and model these aspects. In addition, these individual risks/hazards will need to be weighted within the framework to assess the overall risk.

CC IN FISHERIES #6: Spatial Ecosystem And POpulation DYnamics Model (SEAPODYM) and modelling of tuna population dynamics / June 20, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Continuing with my Climate Change in Fisheries Series (CCFS), here is my 6th on Incorporating climate scenarios in fisheries research.

I had never met Dr Inna Senina before, but I knew about her SPC work and impressive expertise in modelling population dynamics.

Her reputation is not undeserved. Her presentation was impressive and methodologically delivered, with the great graph above illuminating the “Conceptual model of population dynamics” that made a lot of sense to me and tied up various ideas in an elegant image.

She elucidated how the model estimates tuna habitats, biomass distributions, and abundance and explained the differences among the four target tuna species. She also discussed existing uncertainties in modelling tuna population dynamics, the projected biomass redistributions under climate change, and related implications for the Pacific Island Countries and Territories.

The presentation was structured to:

explain the dynamic model for tuna population dynamics,
describe how tuna abundance and spatial distributions are estimated, and
describe the climate change impacts on Pacific Islands' and WCPFC tuna stocks as predicted by quantitative models.

In the first part, the conceptual view of the model was provided and discussed the complexity of the minimal model, enabling a description of tuna population dynamics and the study of the impacts of climate change on tunas. The importance of including spatial dynamics was noted as a description of reproduction, mortality, and movement, all of which are influenced by environmental conditions such as primary production, temperature, oxygen, food resources, and the absence of predators. It was noted that different behaviours of juveniles and adults dictate the need to consider age and life stage structure. On the other hand, how the model could be simplified by considering a two-dimensional space was presented, focusing on three distinct layers based on the micronekton vertical distribution. The model presented feeding habitat as the accessible forage biomass that drives tuna movement. It also explained the different types of movements, including directional and non-directional movement and their effect on tuna distributions. Real-world examples were used to illustrate the model’s performance.

The importance of parameterising the model informing dynamic rates and habitat parameters from observations, validating the model, and addressing potential uncertainties was highlighted. The use of different types of data in estimating abundance, spatial distribution, and movement of tuna species was discussed. The presentation highlighted the limitations of each data type, such as biases in fisheries data and the difficulty to accurately estimate spatial distribution and movement from catch and length frequency data alone. The impact of data on the predicted distribution and movement of a species, using the model of skipjack tuna was illustrated as an example, and discussed the uncertainties in the estimation process, including data coverage, ocean forcing variables and model structure.

The effects of climate change on the four main Pacific tuna populations was discussed, and its implications for Pacific Islands countries and territories. She mentioned using different forcing models to predict the warming under RCP 8.5 and 4.5. The biomass and catch decreases under RCP 8.5 and have less severe impacts under RCP 4.5. The model showed that stocks were stable for the first half of the century but decreased in late 2040, particularly for the skipjack and yellowfin tunas. Using the skipjack example, she attributed this to the reduced availability of mesopelagic micronekton, which migrates at night to the surface and represent a key food resource of skipjack tuna in the warm pool area. The uncertainties in predicting the effects of climate change on tuna populations was discussed, emphasising the importance of including uncertainties in projecting temperature and primary production. Despite model uncertainties, agreement between different models on distributional shifts suggests that changes are inevitable. Highlighting the need to collaborate with others to address these general questions.

Discussion

It is currently unknown weather light levels or availability within the ecosystem will change. It is also not known what the long-term changes to the depth of the thermocline may be.

Due to the accumulated uncertainties, the projections stop in 2050 as the further into the future you go the larger the compounded error. In addition, most of the interest is currently for the closer time frames, i.e. up to 2050.

The biggest source of uncertainty is ocean forcing bias and the other large unknown is the observations of the biology many of which are missing. The model is age-structured and starts at age 0 to capture recruitment trends. The survival of larvae is predicted and information on recruits are included from the fisheries data. The larval distribution data are predicted as the larvae are distributed by currents and influenced by temperature and the density of other plankton, as well as micronekton at the surface, which results in larval mortality. Larval observations are sparse and getting more observations would be beneficial for the model. In addition, observing the fish movement for a longer age window than we currently have would be helpful. For example. for bigeye tuna only fish aged 1-2 are tagged in large numbers and the model would benefit from data for older fish.

The modelling can be EEZ-specific, but if there is strong connectivity between the EEZ and outside, it's not useful. The model can be easily separated along obvious natural boundaries, such as the equator. Once a model is developed, one can zoom into the EEZ, but if the EEZ is small, then it may not be that beneficial.

Model timeframe relies on a projection window of the modelled data, so the time scale for a modelled period can be shortened e.g. if the forcing data are available at a 1 year level then the model can be refined down to a single year. The model does get validated by looking back in time to see how well it goes when compared to existing ocean data.

SEAPODYM will be extended to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and once that is done, interocean data can be compared.

If the fish population is reduced by fishing, the prey limiting aspects of the model are still valid as the model is linked to the absolute size of the biomass. Fishing vessel acoustic data can be used in the models, but they are very sparse so are not widely used currently, but they could be used in future if more data become available.

Currently, all the modelling is done on tuna, but modelling more spatially restricted species, such as non-migratory species, could be included in the future.

Conclusions

Despite model uncertainties, agreement between different models on distributional shifts suggests that it is not a question of ‘IF’ the tuna biomass will shift due to climate change from the Pacific SIDS EEZs but ‘WHEN’ and ‘TO WHAT EXTENT’.
Moderate redistributions of tuna under a lower-emissions scenario indicate that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, in line with the Paris Agreement, would provide a pathway to sustainability for tuna-dependent Pacific Island economies.
Quantitative (Predictive) modelling of fish population dynamics requires data to observe all modelled dynamic processes and a realistic description of the tuna environment on historical, decadal, and climate timescales.
Ongoing and future work is dedicated to reducing uncertainties linked to the model structure and parameter estimation and to providing better quantification of uncertainties related to climate modelling.

My week on board a West African Trawler / June 9, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

A friend and colleague questioned why, at this point in my career, nearly 60 years old and with a family, I would take the risk of boarding a 40-year-old trawler 75 miles out at sea in an open dinghy without a functioning radio and relying solely on my phone's GPS for navigation.

And to be honest, I don’t know why. I guess I should think more about what could go wrong—I rarely do.

In any case, this aligns with my personal principles, as most capacity-building programs around compliance only take place in the authorities' offices. I am unaware of any individual who develops systems and provides training to those on the board of fishing boats responsible for compliance. Therefore, we should also be on board fishing boats if we work in offices and upscale hotel meeting rooms. That is fair.

I'm back working in Guinea-Bissau and lucky to be known as a specialist on both sides of the EU compliance requirements: the sanitary and IUU Catch certifications. (I wrote a booklet explaining both over ten years ago. Let me know if anyone wants to pay me to update!). On top of that, there aren’t many Portuguese-speaking consultants around!

But then I’m also aware that I’m quite lucky to have been a fisherman before a scientist and then a consultant; hence, nothing on the technical side of what I’m doing is new to me.

Finally, I'm here because I've never done anything like this before. I have never fished in these parts of the world, let alone on an exclusively African crewed boat. The crew of 27 is a mixture of Mauritanian, Senegalese, and Guinean-Bissauans.

Additionally, I was unaware that I would be working with Muslim crew members. As a result, the boat operates around prayer times, and alcohol and smoking are not part of the reality on board, something new to me.

Said, the skipper of Mauritania, and Hasan, the chief officer from Senegal, assigned me a cabin in the officers' deck, an honour in itself. I think this was more out of respect for my age than my role. By ten years, I was the oldest person on board, which seemed to command respect from everyone.

back at the helm of a trawler (hoping nothing went wrong!)

I suppose they were intrigued initially by me, but once they realised that it wasn’t my first time in a boat, they were at ease… so much so that on my second day, while I was on the bridge and prayer time came, I offered Said to keep an eye on the boat and the trawl.

He was thankful, as he could then pray with the others. From then on, I did the job at least four times a day (I did not do the 5 a.m.). Every day at around 7 p.m., he would make the call to pray over the speaker system, as an Iman would do back on land. Honestly, it was such a unique experience for me on a fishing boat. When you live in a small community like this boat, you can see the reality of what Islam means to their faithful. That has always been my experience every time I worked in Islamic societies: show appreciation and respect, and you get that back… no matter what religion (or lack of) you are.

All the crew members are so polite and respectful of each other, and they work harder than most. Catch rates are so low that these guys do 8-9 trawls daily. Each trawl takes around 2 hours and is at a shallow depth (50 to 70m), so turnaround is fast… these guys make a massive effort. They take a break for an hour between packing the fish, placing them in the tunnels, and the subsequent winching of the net.

Most communications between nationalities use a mixture of French, Portuguese, Spanish (most of them worked in Spanish boats or in Spain itself), Arabic and Senegalese Creole (no English at all).

The lack of screaming and shouting on board compared to other ships struck me the most. They all know exactly what to do and work as a ballet team in total synchronicity. The captain just signals the times of the setting with the siren call (one short) and the retrieval (three shorts).

Everyone arrives on deck to take their positions and begins their work without delay. When everyone is in place, the deck boss starts the routine, and no instructions are necessary. In the few inevitable mishaps I’ve seen, the right person knew what to do at the exact time.

I always maintained that fishing manoeuvres are perhaps the roughest form of choreography in existence; everyone has a different task, on a highly sequenced process, where if one fucks up, another one gets hurt… It's as simple as that, so it's essential to understand your role and avoid slacking.

Not that it is all roses… this is an old boat that would have been broken apart back in Spain, where it was made in the early 80s; very basic electronics, no internet, and is entirely run down on the processing side (so substantial maintenance is needed if they want to export to the EU), also is entirely infested with cockroaches (has been a while since I spend time in in the morning looking at my bed sheet to see if I did not squash them one overnight)… this latest is also going to be a problem with the EU. The winches are old school hydraulics, so the whole boat shakes and grudges when the net comes up (which is very often); there are four toilets for 28 (27 plus me) people, and so on… yet it is suitable for everyone else is also good for me.

But in hindsight, I was also keen to do the trip… I had been quite frustrated around my work on labour rights in general, and with the WCPFC Draft CMM in particular, and this is my way of reminding myself where I come from, how much privilege I have in my life, and how much I take for granted by being part European and educated…

Of course, I’m not blind to commercial fisheries' many social and environmental problems or the fact that some really shady characters exist. Yet the real shady ones for me are in desks and offices that manage vessels.

I’ll have any of the 27 men in this boat as my guest at home, and so with the 95% of the people I worked with in fishing boats since 1983… that is the reason why I get so angry at the shameless criminalisation of fishers worldwide, particularly now with the framing of maritime domain crimes as a fisheries issue… somehow if you are a fisherman, by de facto, you are a drug, guns, and people’s dealer… and, of course, fisheries observer’s assassins.

with some of the nicest, resilient and hard worjking people you ever meet

The people I fished in this boat represent those in every fishing boat. The overwhelming majority of them are really good people doing the best they can to feed themselves and their loved ones with the limited set of cards life gave them… while at the same time working to feed others!

And every fisherman on board any boat when you are reading this is why the fishing industry exists!

It is not the RFMOS, the national lobbies, the government bilateral deals, the seafood expos, the fisheries forums, or the international organisations. Fishing will survive without any or all of these institutions and their geopolitics… but not without fishers.

And this trip in a West African trawler, one of the fisheries with the worst “fame” in the world, with one of the most welcoming crews I have ever experienced, was nothing more than revealing and an enlightening experience for me… a reminder of how much shit is being talked about fisherman by surelly well-intended people, but that have never experienced fishing by themselves.

I will treasure this experience for the rest of my life.

Hence, I understand something that Ricardo (the senior fisheries observer on board, so I know that, to an extent, he can choose his trips) told me while we were looking at a big new Chinese trawler passing by our starboard with mid-water nets. I said it looked like a nice new boat, and he said it was… “I did my first trip there after their licensing…. It is very modern, and I had my own cabin.”

So I asked him why he had chosen to come to this boat. He smiled and said, “This is an African boat.”

My struggles with the concept of "Aid" / June 4, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

I got very good feedback and support on something I wrote a few days ago about the colonial nature of my work, so I was asked to go deeper into it. And in my head, you can’t get much deeper than the basis of the “need” for the concept of “AID.”

And I’m not talking about “Humanitarian Aid” as emergency relief provided in response to natural disasters, conflict, or other crises. Its primary aim is to save lives and alleviate suffering (when allowed by geopolitics otherwise, look at the present situation in Palestine)

I’m talking about “Development Aid,” often called foreign aid, which is designed to provide financial or material assistance from one country or organization to another, typically to support economic development, improve living standards, and address humanitarian issues in the recipient country.

I make a living in the “Development Aid” space, which is framed as short to long-term support for promoting sustainable development and improving infrastructure, education, healthcare, and economic stability, based on redressing the imbalances created mostly by colonisation, as I wrote before.

Besides the already discussed paternalistic and “inevitability” concepts, I also think that Aid and international development have produced their own distortions. The more aid there is, the greater the encouragement of assumptions that it is the only solution to redress the exploitation of earlier times. Aid and assistance are then expected as a right rather than a partial solution to particular circumstances in a bigger problem.

Imposing colonial (i.e. imported) government structures over traditional governance and tenure has also created wrong incentives. To enter someone's garden and steal food, to steal someone’s fish from their gear or traps is an exceptionally socially offensive act in most societies where I work. To work it out, both parties would have to go through customary restorative justice in most cases involving the families and “payments” of some sort. However, governmental bribery and corruption do not garner the same degree of public censure for example.

And I don't see this as a "moral failure" of developing states I work with; after all, the notion of accumulation of money as a form of "economic capital" is only a century old, when the prevalent role of the accumulation of social capital, in the form of social standing, "mana", favours owd instead of owed is the thousands of years old and the basis of their culture and world view.

Thus, when that crash of imposed expectations in the form of "modern governance" and traditional and cultural thinking forms the basis for framing my present work on policy and other high-level policy work, I feel like most of my work is futile. It is based on a "non-reality," an assumption of what it "should be" instead of what it really is.

When I worked more at the food-producing level (i.e., fishing, working with people to catch more fish, and maintaining that fish in better conditions for longer), I felt more useful than with some of the jobs I do today… and I struggle so much with it.

Of course, it is not always black or white. There are jobs that I feel I have been helpful at (my present work with RMI, my work with Ecuador in 2006/7, some of the work with the EU yellow cards I did for FFA in PNG, Solomons, Kiribati, and Tuvalu, some of my present efforts in crew labour). Still, there are also years of work done in many places of which there are no traces anymore.

Some developing agencies' usual assumption that it is the fault of the recipient countries is wrong, as is blaming the low quality of the consultants. While there may be an element of truth in some cases, for me, the poor outcomes of the "development industry" are the product of a bigger problem, which is the basis of the thinking and actions that created the situation in the first place.

We are stuck with it and cannot make the massive changes needed to rectify the situation. We are assuming it is possible to fix it, which is already an enormous assumption.

CC in Fisheries #5: Incorporating climate scenarios in fisheries research / June 2, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Continuing with my Climate Change in Fisheries Series (CCFS), here is my 5th on Incorporating climate scenarios in fisheries research.

I was quite impressed with John Morrongiello's presentation from the University of Melbourne. It was nicely delivered, with some humour yet ultimate scientific rigour.

I'm used to reading a lot about the impact of climate change in fisheries at a macro scale. Yet, these changes start at individual and species levels and then cascade into stock changes, so it was refreshing to hear what is happening at the more granular level.

John’s presentation incorporated climate scenarios in fisheries research, covering methods for integrating climate scenarios into fisheries research design and included case studies demonstrating the application of scenarios in fisheries research.

The presentation explored the three key ways that ocean warming can impact fisheries.

Distributional changes,
reduced body size, and
alterations to the timing of key life history events (phenology).

It highlighted the extreme events, such as marine heatwaves, which are forecast to become more frequent and intense in a warmer future. These could result in key biological thresholds being surpassed sooner than would be expected based on the longer-term average sea surface temperature trend. Climate change will also likely cause shifts in the frequency and intensity of ENSO events.

It is important to consider a species’ ecological niche when exploring climate-driven distributional shifts. The ecological niche is the set of conditions in which a species survives and reproduces. These conditions determine where a species lives and how it responds to environmental changes, such as warming oceans.

Warming can allow species to expand their existing ranges as previously unfavourable areas become habitable. Range expansions can be driven by changes in the physical environment, or removal of other species that may have competitively excluded a species.

Warming can cause species to undergo a range shift, whereby their distribution tracks preferable conditions. Here, it might get too hot on the equatorial edge of a distribution and more favourable on the poleward edge of a distribution.

Warming can cause a range contraction. This usually occurs when conditions in part of a species’ range become unfavourable, but they lack the capacity to track these conditions further poleward.

Lastly, warming can cause changes in the depth distribution of species as they move deeper into cooler water. There are limits to the capacity of species to move deeper, driven by other aspects of their ecological niche. Two case studies, from waters around the USA and tuna in New Caledonia were discussed, to explore these different types of distributional changes.

Fisheries managers can consider the following points to help address the potential for distributional changes in their stocks:

Properly define stocks in the first place (using tagging, genetics etc.);
Monitor spatial distribution of stocks (including depth);
Be prepared to re-evaluate stock identification;
Be prepared to re-evaluate stock area; and
Be prepared to update stock models.

The ‘temperature-size rule’ describes the observed phenomena of increased juvenile growth, earlier maturation, reduced lifespan, and smaller adult size at higher temperatures. While the mechanisms underpinning the “temperature-size rule”remain debated, the implications of reduced body size on the viability of populations and productivity of fisheries are clear.

Of particular note is the fact that bigger fish produce disproportionately more offspring than smaller fish. Reductions in body size thus affect a stock's reproductive potential. Furthermore, smaller individuals often experience greater natural mortality due to predation.

Documenting changes in the body size of a stock can be difficult without a good time series of fish length/ weight data. One way to address this data shortage is to use the growth information naturally achieved in fish otoliths. Here, a few otolith collection events can be used to recreate the growth dynamics of a population over decadal scales. Climate signals can then be explored in these growth series.

Fisheries managers should, whenever possible:

Monitor the size and age structure of their stock’s catch (through time and/or space).
Consider targeted studies (e.g. otolith growth) to assess sensitivity of stock to current and future warming;
Don’t assume that life history parameters (e.g. age- or size-at-maturity) used in stock assessment models are stationary. Try to monitor these periodically (gonads or new maturity proxies);
Be prepared to update stock models with new knowledge; and
Promote the preservation of big fish.

Rapid warming can alter cues used by species to stimulate reproduction and developmental rates. If these shifts in reproduction or other life history events become out of sync with environmental conditions, significant impacts can occur on populations.

The match-mismatch hypothesis stipulates that recruitment is highest when newly hatched larvae encounter a food-rich environment. Advanced spawning timing that is not matched by advanced food availability causes recruitment failure.

In summary, climate change can impact fish and fisheries in a number of ways. In turn, fisheries managers must understand how warming will likely affect their stock. This could be through dedicated investigations or based on other existing knowledge.

Regardless, managers should continue to monitor their stocks as best as possible to ensure any changes in distribution, size, or phenology can be identified and appropriate actions taken to potentially offset productivity risks.

Discussion

The SST does not change much between day and night, however, if there is wind causing upwelling that will impact the water temperature over a small timeframe. As the ocean warms the metabolic rate of ectotherms increases, so larvae will grow faster and increase the rate at which they use of their yolk stores, if there is not enough food at that time as a result of lower zooplankton levels, they will starve. If the temperature goes too high that can also cause mortality, or for survivors who were living for prolonged periods in suboptimal conditions, there can be other impacts, such as a reduction in the immune system.

A good complex model allows you to explore many linked things, but you also run the risk of getting too complex, which can take a long time to perfect, and of ignoring the simpler models in the pursuit of perfection, and you may never get answers.

Fish weight is important to measure, but weight fluctuates more than length and is harder to measure, so models tend to use length data.

Rivers are influenced by rainfall, and big storm events impact rivers. These will impact the areas close to river mouths, estuaries, or mangroves but tend not to be that influential over a larger scale. They can, however, have some locally important influences.

The colonial nature of my line of work / May 15, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

I have been very open in my views that working in “international development” and in “developing countries,” while most times well-intentioned, is deeply rooted in colonial thinking. This is the biggest issue that I struggle with in my work… and it is, to a certain extent, unavoidable if you work in this industry.

Hence, I consistently focus on working with individuals, spending as much time in the country with them as possible, and trying to understand their culture, family, and worldview to the best of my abilities.

I’ve written about this in the past yet last night, I read an article by Andre Dao “Reverse the Flow” in the latest “New Philosopher” that touched precisely some of my complex “guilt”on what I do.

It's not that I’m trying to bite the hand that feeds me; the opposite… I always look for ways to do a better job… and the first step is recognising and incorporating criticism.

What hit me the most, someone who grew up in between cultures with a European dad and an indigenous mum in an indigenous setting, is the sense of “inevitability” of all this… which wasn't the idea at the time of the independence of many of the countries I work with… nor the one I grew up.

I remember understanding as a kid the movement of the non-aligned countries… something this article touches on… yet somehow, it seems to have lost its independent voice… and become an echo chamber for authoritarians.

What I liked was that they were the original “third world”.

Today, the term is synonymous with poverty- as if vast swathes of the globe were destined to be poor. However, for the nations that initially organised themselves as the Third World, it was not a label of denigration but of hope. For if the First World was the capitalist West, led by the US, and the Second World was the communist East, led by the USSR, then the Third World was neither - a collective of newly decolonised states committed to the idea that another world, neither capitalist nor communist, was possible. The Third World was thus not a place but a project.

Like the development industry, that project aimed to close the gap between wealthy and poor nations. But instead of focusing on the failings of individual countries, the Third World project aimed to reform the global system that ensured that the flow of global wealth was unidirectional.

Yet today, we talk openly about of ‘first-world problems' or 'third-world conditions'

Despite the ubiquity of such phrases, there is little consensus about what causes this wealth divide."

If anything, thinking about global inequality can function as some thing of a political Rorschach test: all too often, experts take what they already believe to be a fundamental virtue and retrofit that virtue - and its corresponding vice - to history.

So if having X is good, and having Y is bad, then the argument goes: rich countries are rich because they have abundant amounts of X, and poor countries are poor because they lacked X and had too much of Y.

One example of this kind of thinking - thankfully less palatable than it once was - is that the wealth of rich nations can be explained by some intrinsic quality of its people: a shared spirit of invention, or a culture of entrepreneurialism," or simply an ethic of hard work.

The necessary corollary of such beliefs is that the people of poor nations lack smarts and individual ambition. Of course, this is (not particularly veiled) racism, in which tropes about unintelligent, lazy people of colour are trotted out to not only explain but justify global inequality.

In other words, the distribution of wealth is made to seem natural - and thus there is little that can be done about it.

In seeming contrast to these out dated views are experts who look not at intrinsic qualities of temperament but rather at political and economic institutions. Take “Why Nations Fail,” the bestselling book by economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, which argues that wealthy societies share a set of inclusive institutions - namely, property rights including patents that encourage economic activity, and political rights that allow the majority of people to have a say in how they are governed.

Or take Thomas Friedman's “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” in which the columnist for the New York Times argues that the world could be divided into those willing to put on the "golden strait jacket" necessary to build luxury cars like the Lexus - namely, privatising public goods, reducing public spending, deregulating foreign investment, and liberalising trade - and those "still caught up in the fight over who owns which olive tree".

"On first glance, these prescriptions for generating wealth seem less humiliating than attributing poverty to biology. After all, it was open to every society to establish 'modern' rules about property or to adopt free trade policies. But if we look more closely, we can see a familiar hubris at work - the hubris of proposing one's own society as the lodestar of progress.

Granted, the language of a racial hierarchy- of civilised and uncivilised states, for instance - has been erased. But there remains a kind of universal timeline for the world with Western liberal democracies at the far end - already 'developed' - and everyone else, still 'developing', arrayed somewhere along the line behind.

On this timeline, poor countries are recast as 'backwards'—or, better yet, as the children of the international community. Either way, they are seen to need tutelage—including, where necessary, the toughest of tough love—to establish the Western institutions required to join the (rich) adult's table.

And that is precisely what happened after World War II, when international economic organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank took it upon themselves to tutor the newly decolonised states of the Global South in how to fit the 'golden straitjacket'.

This school of hard economics - aka 'modernisation theory' - included forcing poor states to abandon welfare and infra structure programs to repay a debt to former colonial masters, abandoning 'traditional' patterns of land use for 'modern' property titles, and opening up to multinational corporations.

Seventy-five years later, international development remains a booming industry. (I have work lined up for the next 2 years… and have been only taking 50% of job offers than come to me for the last 15.)

Which makes it all the more awkward that in that time, the divide between rich and poor has gotten worse rather than better. In fact, between 1960 and 2000, the gap between the richest country and the poorest country quadrupled.

One potential explanation for the failure of modernisation theory is that despite the rhetoric about aid and development, rich countries have deliberately been keeping the poor down. Or, to borrow a phrase from the South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang, once wealthy Western countries got rich, they kicked away the ladder.

That is, the major developed countries all generated wealth precisely by not donning the golden straitjacket; instead, they used interventions and protectionist policies to build up large-scale domestic industries. Only once those industries were well established, says Chang, did the rich turnaround and kick away the ladder of prosperity, insisting on 'free' trade policies that decimated fledgling industries in the Global South.

Perhaps, then, the answer to our question is not to be found in the internal attributes of any one nation at all - whether that be temperament, political and economic institutions, or indeed geography and natural resources (another popular explanation following the logic of 'rich countries have X').

Instead, poverty might best be understood as an attribute of the global system.

Of course… this further aligns my views on the colonial nature of ecolabels and private certifications like the ecolabels

Macroeconomic impact of a FAD Closure on a small island country / May 4, 2024 by Francisco Blaha

Yes, it's another of my FAD-related blogs, but the magnitude of the shift caused by drifting eFADs in the purse seine fishery cannot be overstated. If we discover a disruptive event akin to a miracle sun flare, and all FAD data would NOT be redirected to vessels and fleet offices, this could collapse the canned tuna industry as we currently know it, for good and for bad.

If there is no FAD fishing, I think only half the fleet will be economically feasible. This would be good for stocks but bad for those who make a living from it… including coastal states at this stage. Also, I don’t know if there is enough experience in free school fishing still in the fleet… not just at the bridge level… but well on the deck. Setting the purse seine on a free school is WAY fiddlier than setting on a FAD.

In any case, some of my questions about the impact of a fully respected FAD closure on the fishery and its economics have actually been answered… but not in the WCPO but in the Indian Ocean.

Last December, the WCPFC agreed to a 45-day closure, down from a long-standing 90-day one… and I wondered if any economic analysis was done on that.

In any case, this is a Nature paper, where my mate and fellow dub-head Alex Tidd is involved: Macroeconomic impact of an international fishery regulation on a small island country

As usual, read the original; here are the bits I like the most.

Introduction
Drifting fish aggregating devices (dFADs) are under scrutiny in the global tuna fishery because of their massive use in the oceans, their significant contribution to the growing fishing capacity of industrial purse seiners, and their negative externalities (e.g., bycatch of endangered and protected species such as pelagic sharks or loss at sea after sinking or stranding, leading to increased marine pollution and habitat degradation)

Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) have established management plans to curb the intensive use of dFADs by implementing spatial or seasonal closures, limited deployment, and purchase of buoys per vessel, restrictions on dFAD sets, etc. However, the best intentions of dFAD management measures can also have unintended environmental or economic impacts.

In February 2023, the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), the RFMO responsible for tuna management in the Indian Ocean, voted in favor of a resolution to create a 72-day seasonal dFAD closure from July 2024. This resolution came from a group of contracting cooperating parties (CPCs) who have experienced the adverse effects of dFADs. However, many other CPCs have objected to this resolution (in September 2023, at least eleven states had objected to this management measure: Comoros, Oman, Somalia (withdrew on March 25, 2023), Philippines, Seychelles, Kenya, European Union, France, Tanzania, Yemen (withdrew on August 8, 2023), Mauritius, Thailand, and Republic of Korea.

Objecting members representing more than one-third of the 30 IOTC members, even the non-objecting members “shall not be bound by that measure” any longer (IOTC Circular 2023-51, August 8, 2023)), including developing and coastal states that are economically dependent on tuna landings from industrial purse-seine fisheries. Although the need to restrict the development of dFADs is recognized by most experts around the world, the consequences of management plans in all their dimensions are insufficiently considered.

The present research is focused on the economic consequences of an international regulation (dFAD closure) for a small country that would lead to a sharp decline in its exports of canned tuna.

Interactions between shared stock fisheries
The literature on fisheries management policy focuses on management’s effectiveness in preventing stock depletion and overfishing9,10,11. Maintaining fish stocks within safe biological limits and achieving a maximum sustainable yield (MSY) remain the cornerstones of natural resource management. This is because the conservation of biomass and biodiversity should support all other dimensions of sustainability, including economic or social aspects such as the role of women in fisheries12. However, in most cases, management measures are designed for each individual species and stock without considering the consequences for the entire ecosystem from which the resources are extracted or the social and economic consequences that the decisions may have on coastal communities13,14.

In tropical tuna fisheries where mobile stocks are shared, interactions initially occur at different age classes between surface and deep-sea fishing gears (e.g., purse-seine and longline). For example, purse-seine fleets using dFADs and pole-and-line fleets target juveniles of yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), while longline vessels catch more adults of the same species.

Harry Campbell estimated what an optimal allocation of yellowfin catches among the three gears (purse-seine, longline, and pole-and-line) might look like. He relied on an earlier estimate of catch interactions between 1978 and 1989, which indicated that a 1% decline of catch per unit effort (CPUE) in the purse-seine fishery corresponded to a 1.68% increase in CPUE in the longline fishery eighteen months later. However, he preferred to use a more conservative response of a 1% increase in longline catches for every 1% decrease in purse-seine yellowfin catches. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to demonstrate a clear causal relationship between the catch dynamics of yellowfin tuna and bigeye tuna (T. obesus), which have been fished in the Indian Ocean since the 1950s, despite the enormous expansion of purse-seine fisheries since the early 1980s.

More recently, Ovando et al. studied the bigeye tuna fishery in the West Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) and attempted to estimate the social cost of bigeye tuna conservation in terms of forgone catches of skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) with dFADs. The authors estimated that the MSY of bigeye tuna can only be achieved at the cost of withdrawing three-quarters of the effort on dFADs, which would simultaneously reduce the catch of small bigeye tuna and yellowfin tuna, but also of skipjack. In such a case, the net welfare result would lead to a loss of USD 1.2 billion and would primarily affect the Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS), while only Japanese sashimi consumers would benefit. They concluded that only a limited dFAD removal (~15%) would bring social benefits that exceed costs.

Economic effects of dFAD management on SIDS
The economic consequences of dFAD management can also be severe for contracting parties. In the WCPO, SIDS would be the first losers from a substantial reduction in dFADs. The Vessel Day Scheme allows small island countries to sell effort rights in their EEZ (access fees) to the vessels of distant water fishing nations (DWFN)10,20. This system would become less profitable, and the value of the VDS license could decline significantly if dFADs were prohibited or severely restricted. Recall that fishing access fees represent more than 50% of government revenue for Tuvalu, 70% for Kiribati, and more than 80% for Tokelau. In the coming decades, climate change will reduce and spatially redistribute tuna biomass, eliminating a significant portion of this revenue for a number of Pacific SIDS (Ibid.) and also for territories located in the Indian Ocean.

Tuna-dependent economies will not be the only ones to suffer from a seasonal closure of dFAD fishing every year. Purse-seine fleets around the world are increasingly dependent on dFADs because they use larger vessels, supply boats to support them, and use sophisticated electronic equipment such as echo-sounders to detect fish biomass under dFADs, etc

It has been estimated that a six-month dFAD closure in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans would reduce the catch by 600 to 1800 tons per boat per year, i.e., 12% to 37% less catch, depending on the season and conditions under which this dFAD restriction measure is implemented. In the WCPO, the economic loss would amount to 15% of the vessel’s revenue, i.e., on average, USD −250,000 per fishing trip. The economic prosperity of small developing states relies often on the fish landed by these industrial fleets.

The economic development of small island territories is based on many port activities and fish-related jobs such as stevedores, fuel suppliers, shipping agencies, fishing equipment manufacturers, warehousing agents, sea transporters, fish processors, seafood traders, etc

Conclusive remarks and limitations of the study
In this article, we have examined the macroeconomic consequences of an international fisheries management measure for a small open economy. The recent IOTC decision on a 72-day closure of the dFAD fishery for the Indian Ocean purse-seine fishery could lead to a shortage of fish supply for tuna-dependent areas and affect other activities and institutions through a chain of cascading effects. Using a dynamic general equilibrium model applied to the case of Seychelles, we examined the spillover effects of a 12% decline in fish exports for this country.

We show that this shock to foreign demand affects all industries and institutions in this small open economy that specializes in tourism and fishing. The shock wave spreads rapidly to the domestic demand for all goods and services through the decline in capital income. The IMF’s projected growth trend of 3–4% is undermined by a deviation of nearly 9% after seven years, resulting in a change in GDP of −5% or −6%, with the impact compounding over time if other factors remain equal, i.e., in the absence of countervailing economic policies or international support.

All the drivers of aggregate demand are affected (household consumption, investment, government spending, etc.), starting with the most important one (exports), so that the entire domestic economy depends on foreign visitors and tourist activities, increasing its vulnerability to a new shock such as a pandemic or an international crisis. The overall effect on the domestic economy is comparable to a strong ENSO event, as shown in the past (1998) for this small island territory.

Several limitations of the study can be put forward. The first one concerns the hypothetical case itself, which is not likely to happen since one-third of the IOTC members have objected, thus canceling the dFAD management measure. The shock is therefore certainly overestimated because a re-allocation of the fishing effort to free school fishing or substitutes of raw material inputs for the tuna cannery may occur if the measure is implemented. A second one lies in the lack of recent data to build an updated version of the social accounting matrix.

However, what matters is the deviation trend after the shock, rather than the accuracy of the outcome itself. In future research, more comprehensive analysis should be undertaken to assess the effects of dFAD management at the overall scale of the Indian Ocean tuna fishery. This analysis should involve all fleets and all CPCs, with the aim of establishing a fair and sustainable agreement.

Francisco Blaha

Independent Fisheries Adviser

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