Continuing with my last two blogs on the FAO guidelines on transhipments and the logistics of containerisation, I want to tackle something that does annoys me a bit , and is the perception that all transhipment are the same and they are all bad… and as usual when it comes to fisheries… one size does not fit all.
Hi I’m a transhipment in port, and i’m not a problem
Transshipment is a legitimate practice in the tuna fishing industry. In a typical transshipment operation, a refrigerated carrier vessel collects catch from multiple fishing boats and carries it back to port. This practice enables fishing vessels to continue fishing, which reduces fuel costs for fishing vessels and gets the catch to port quicker.
Tuna fishing in the central and western Pacific Ocean is regulated by both the countries in the region and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC).
The WCPFC seeks to ensure, through effective management, the long-term conservation and sustainable use of highly migratory fish stocks. The Commission develops conservation and management measures that are binding on vessels that fish in the region. These are enforced in various ways, including by on-board observers, electronic vessel monitoring systems, at-sea boarding and inspection, and aerial surveillance.
The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention defines transhipment as “the unloading of all or any of the fish onboard a fishing vessel to another fishing vessel either at sea or in port.” In recent years, around 80% of purse seine product and 22% of longline product harvested in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention Area has been transhipped on or near the fishing grounds
There are two main types of tuna transshipment in this part of the world.
Transhipment in or near a port, this does not mean that the vessels have to be tied up to wharf, in fact it happens mostly in the lagoons and protected areas of the port.
For us, this happens under the authorization, control, and inspection of the country where the port is located. In most Pacific Island countries the staff of the fisheries department monitor the volumes and species composition of the catch being transferred.
In fact, and based on my work outside the region, we apply more controls to transhipment in port than many other countries apply to their landings. Transhipment in port is the bulk of operations for the Purse Seine (PS) fleet that is by far the biggest fleet in terms of volumes catch. All PS fleet in the region has to tranship in port, and as part of the FFA surveillance mechanisms we make sure that that is the case.
And in these transhipments Port State rules are the king, therefore control is much more accessible, in fact most port states in the region are in the same unit (via FFA/PNA) with the coastal states where the fish was caught.
The other form of transshipment in the region (which is far more problematic) is transhipments at sea, which come in two modalities:
Transhipment in the EEZ of coastal countries: this only happens thankfully for a couple of very defined smaller fleets in a couple of countries in our region where the vessels tranship in the nationals water near the fishing grounds to carries that bring the fish back to port in the same country. This type of transhipment allow the fleet to operate more efficiently and does not compromise compliance as the coastal state knows the vessels, their operations, and the fish come back to the ports of those states where it can be accounted.
In these cases coastal state rules, and this is fundamental here
Then is high seas transhipment, which is VERY problematic- it occurs in ocean areas beyond the exclusive economic zone of any country. In those areas the authorization and controls over the transhipments are the responsibility of the flag States of the concerned carrier vessel and fishing vessel. This type of transshipment is particularly common for longline vessels and I have written lots about it, this link will take you to plenty of explanations
And while WCPFC recognices that transshipment on the high seas could cause problems, the international agreement that established the WCPFC states: “In order to support efforts to ensure accurate reporting of catches, the members of the Commission shall encourage their fishing vessels, to the extent practicable, to conduct transshipment in port.” Recognizing this point, the Commission made a rule in 2009 stipulating there shall be no transshipment on the high seas except where a member country has determined that it is impractical for a vessel – but the Commission did not define “impractical”, thereby creating a loophole.
As said, in these transhipments flag states rule, yet unfortunately, there are lots of doubts on how much they actually do.
The “rule” that " there shall be no transhipment on the high seas" is compromised by the loophole that allows unscrupulous DWFNs to assert that it is "impracticable" for certain vessels to comply. We've argued for years about how to define "impracticable", and we are still nowhere close to it. Yes, we have now a Transhipment Intercessional Working Group at the WCPFC, yet its pace seems to be defined on geological timelines more than biological ones.
All reported high seas transhipments were conducted by fishing vessels registered to just 4 countries and one fishing entity that NZ has different levels of engagement, vessels of China, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Korea, and Vanuatu accounted for almost 90% of those transhipments, with Japan for the rest. As 22 of the 24 registered longline vessels flagged by Vanuatu are owned by individuals or companies in China and Chinese Taipei, it may be possible to attribute an even greater portion of high seas transhipments to those two operators
(In what is perhaps the only area I’ve seen where the “one China policy” actually works CN and TW work in perfect unison in this one)
The “good” news is that it seems to be a slight decrease in the numbers of transhipments reported this year…. But considering that there are no observers out there…. I’m highly dubious of the accuracy of that number. It would very convenient to show a reduction after we (PEW and others have been hammering on this for years) shown that transshipments have increased over 160% from 544 operations in 2014 to 1472 in 2019.
HS transhipments have become the norm not the exception for those DWFN, and that is the opposite that the WCPFC CMM indicates.
So the way forwards is to keep working on reforming such operations. There appear to be two possibilities for this:
Ban transshipment on the high seas and require any transshipment to take place in a port where it can be easily monitored; or
Greatly improve the monitoring of high seas transshipment.
The first possibility would certainly result in improved accountability and transparency of the tuna catches… yet every time we try it is opposed by the transshipping vessels flag state.
The second possibility for reforming high seas transshipment would be to have the observers onboard the carrier vessels produce detailed reports and have those reports sent in a timely manner directly to the Commission for analysis. This possibility is likely to meet less opposition than simply banning high seas transshipment and forcing a major change in the way vessels to operate.
So in conclusion: are all transhipment created equal? No!