The good people from ATUNA did an interview looking for some of my opinions and 2020 and what is to come in 2021. I’ve written before about my strong views on paying for content, so here I share the interview in case you are interested (as I repeat my position on some topics) and don’t subscribe to ATUNA.
Last year was very unusual, to say the least. The global pandemic hit markets around the world and halted multiple initiatives. As the first month of 2021 ends, we want to look back at some of the challenges in 2020 and those that lay ahead. Atuna talked with Fisheries Specialist Francisco Blaha, who offered his perspective based on his experience in the Pacific.
It is impossible to talk about 2020 without mentioning the COVID-19 crisis. So, we asked Blaha for his opinion on how tuna fisheries managed this situation right off the bat.
"Definitively no one expected (the pandemic] for sure ... how it was handled? That depends wherein on the 'industry' you are," he said.
The fresh tuna trade was one of the most severely impacted sectors as the restaurant's demand crashed. Consequently, the longline industry was terribly affected as its main focus is chilled fish, explained Blaha. "While this segment is small in volume, it is significant in value, and unfortunately is one of the few that have purely Pacific Island domestic investment and employs the biggest number of locals."
The Fisheries Specialist was adamant in highlighting how appalling the year was for observers in the Pacific. In 2019, around 2,000 placements on purse seiners' fishing trips employed the approximately 600 members of the observer program. But this came to an almost full stop "so they, and the monitors who are generally onboard during transhipment, are now out of work and income."
Last July, Atuna reported that it was likely that fisheries observers, who are employed on a trip by trip contract basis, needed to look for temporary jobs during the pandemic. Shortly after, Satlink launched a training program for observers to retrain themselves as Electronic Monitoring (EM) analysts during the crisis. However, in the end, Blaha frankly admits that it is unknown how many observers have found an alternative job and who will be returning to observer duties when boarding resumes. "Obviously this is a worry," especially considering that it will take time to train a sufficient number of new people.
Blaha observed that stopping the observer program impacted the observers more than the fishing companies. Distant water fishing fleets were coping much better. "They continued operations as usual, so much so, that even if some units of certification for eco-labels that rely on observers' oversight, certifications have continued even with no observers on board, so that says a lot." However, it is a social and financial disaster for the observers and those who depend on them for income, without any social security or safety net in place.
The fact that the people in the coastal countries and those onboard the vessels are taking the hardest punch is not surprising. He mentioned that this is not exclusive of the pandemic but it usually happens with any storm that hits the tuna industry. During the ongoing crisis, a lot of attention has been given to logistics, supply, demand, and corporate difficulties. But for Blaha "the biggest impact has been on the people at the frontline - fishers, local fishing companies, observers and operational officers."
Longline Transshipment Exception Has Been Abused
One of the reasons for the distant water fishing companies to keep going with minimal impact is that the purse seine fleet's transshipments have continued in the lagoon or outer sectors around some of the islands. This was to avoid the chance of infecting the local population with COVI0-19, but there are also has been a notable increase in at-sea transshipments in the high seas longline fleet.
Blaha observed that while under WCPFC CMM 2009-06 at-sea transshipments are not allowed in the area, there is an 'impracticability' exception, which has been highly abused. This is because impracticability is not defined nor explained, so many boat owners have been able to take advantage of this loophole (and they are not keen to remediate it). "As a consequence, the number of at-sea longline transshipments within the WCPFC area increased by 166 %; from 554 transfers in 2014 to 1,472 in 2019. Furthermore, as of 13 November 2020, 62%t of vessels on the WCPFC Record of Fishing Vessels were authorized to transship in the high seas. High seas transshipments are now the norm, rather than the exception."
A 2020 analysis on the issue by the Pew Charitable Trusts presented to the WCPFC shows that the fishing vessels allowed to transship at sea are mainly flagged to Taiwan, China, Vanuatu, and the Republic of Korea. The carriers receiving that fish carry are flagged to Taiwan, Panama, Korea, Liberia, China, and Vanuatu. With very few exceptions, all these operations happened without observer coverage during normal years, and it increased even more last year due to the pandemic
Looking Ahead
"Personally, I think the biggest challenge will be to make the decisions that weren't made in 2020, on top of the ones we should be making in 2021," said Blaha.
It is a well-established reality that COVID-19 will be around for a big part of this year, so this will continue to affect fisheries management bodies' decision-making processes. He explained that many of the meetings where policies are formulated take place along culturally established events, particularly in the Pacific where "all is well framed by sharing cultural norms along with conversations, food, drinks, and stories." Online gatherings have really put a stop to all these long-lasting forms of negotiations.
"The simple fact is that we all have learned a new 'way to do things' but without much preparation and the variable quality of the internet makes some of these meetings very frustrating."
While he is optimistic that advances will be made - albeit not without struggles - he was clear that at this point we do not know whether the COVID-19 measures will disseminate during 2021.
Blaha concluded that if he were ever to find the "fisheries genie," he would have three very straightforward wishes for 2021 and the decade:
increased transparency and less geopolitics;
elimination of subsidies both for vessels and for land-based premises by the main DWFN, and;
an income structure for fishers, observers, and fisheries officers that reflect the expectations we put on their roles and money accrued from their work.
But he doubts if he will receive any of these wishes this year.