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.