I write a lot about Noro (my favorite tuna spot in the world), I wrote about the US treaty before, I watch Al Jazeera news very often and I know and respect a lot the people being interviewed here.
So what is not to promote about this! People I like, saying things that I believe, in a place I love!
During my brief time as an "almost senior" fishery officer at FAO, I got the opportunity to meet some very capable people that have a unique view on what are the overarching issues at world fisheries. And I'm very lucky that I maintained a good working and personal relationship with all of them, and they are patient and generous with their time and knowledge to my frequent questions. Can't thank them enough!
PSM in action... doing a boarding in PNG
I been writing about PSMA for a while now (here, here and more ) in relationship to the general work in MCS and in regards "my baby" the UAC# (Unloading Authorization Code) that has PSM as part of its DNA. But really... what it means in practical terms for the countries that signed it and for those that not.
These were the questions I asked a good friend in FAO legal, whom actually I meet in 1998!
The "magic" 25 ratifications/accessions mean that the PSMA is in force for the countries (parties) that have ratified/acceded to the agreement. It practically means that the obligations in the agreement are binding on the parties (i.e. those which ratified/acceded to and lack of implementation can be a cause for dispute and litigation by another party).
It makes practical sense for the parties to PSMA to translate the obligation and requirements under PSMA into domestic law. If a party does not have a domestic law (whether a new law or existing -old- law), that party might not implement the PSMA effectively but it does not absolve that party from its obligation and may be taken to task by other parties for not doing so.
If a State is not a party, it can still comply with the requirements of the PSMA if it finds the requirements to be logical/useful. If it does not comply with the PSMA requirements, it does not have any responsibility or cannot be challenged by a party for not complying with the PSMA.
How this plays in the context of the WCPFC, that last year decided not to adopt a PSM CMM (Control and Management Measure) proposed by FFA>
Is hard to say if the PSM CMM proposal will be taken up and the direction the WCPFC members will take it to. However, that certain important members of the WCPFC are also parties to the PSMA including USA and the EU, Korea and Indonesia. Among the PICs, Palau and Tonga are already parties.
I am sure that the parties to the PSMA will not want to see that a CMM of the WCPFC on PSM departs from the PSMA. The understanding is that PNA and PIC/FFA members of the WCPFC were not keen on the PSMA because they want to have in place first the disproportionate burden CMM. (I wrote about this here)
However, a "disproportionate burden CMM", would be hard to be implemented as a "generic CMM", it must be linked to an actual activity. A CMM on PSM, therefore could have provisions on disproportionate burden considerations for PNA and PIC/FFA members.
Japan seems also changing its stance on the PSMA (note that Japan was not in favour of PSMA in the past) and might accede to the agreement soon. In that case, Japan will join the club of PSMA parties in the WCPFC and will put the pressure on for the CMM on PSM to be consistent with the PSMA.
Hence after some wrangling, this all could be good news for us in the region. I believe that any advances in that field are good and as good pragmatic man, i think that the perfect should not get in the way of the good.
in case you wanna know why a left FAO, was a lifestyle decision, I wrote about it here back in 2009 on my original, non-fisheries blog "Life in Development".
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation’s (ISSF) 2015 annual report, released this week highlights the need to foster continuous improvement across global tuna fisheries through collaboration and advocacy.
Resource users transshipping - Resources owners hanging around for scraps
ISSF produces The Status of the Stocks report on an annual basis or more to highlight the health of the world’s commercial tuna stocks and to serve as a measuring stick for progress made and the work still ahead.
The Status of the Stocks measures the status of all major commercial tuna stocks against three key factors: stock abundance; exploitation/management; and environmental impact (bycatch).
You can see an interactive version of the report here
Some of the key numbers below:
48% of tuna stocks globally are at a healthy level of abundance
39% of tuna stocks globally need stronger management to end overfishing
78% of global tuna catch (by tonnage) comes from healthy stocks
16% of global tuna catch (by tonnage) comes from stocks where fishing is not well managed
Whatever critics may say about ISSF as an industry-funded organization, the people that put this report in place is or the highest caliber, and very respected.
There still a lot of conversations about FADs and get asked about them a lot, particularly since there is a drive to ban them completely by some NGOs, while others want to go for better designs to reduce risk of entanglement of sharks, sea turtles, and other organisms while reverting from synthetic to biodegradable materials – to reduce marine debris.
In November of last year, I wrote about them from a more technical point of view here. So I explore different aspects today, there are plenty of FADs design, but the biggest design feature is that FADs can be of 2 sorts: anchored or drifting, and both can have entangling "bits" attached so is no difference there.
Remember that the whole idea of a FAD is to create the illusion of a big "thing" floating so fish congregate underneath. People put all sorts of stuff underneath the floating part to create that illusion. One of the most common pieces of "stuff" you have on board are pieces of nets, so those are the entangling bit, but then… they are not really big, so the impact, while existent, is not massive.
Originally, we used to put coconut tree leaves all around and make the "body" of bamboo (see the pic above where you see the netting also), but they require way more maintenance.
Making them biodegradable is great regarding marine debris, and if you get the net bit out, the entanglement accidental catch shall be reduced, but so does the life span of the FAD. The companies are putting expensive electronics on them: sun-powered sonars with satellite data transmission devices are more common than ever, and that does not play well with the concept of “biodegradable.”
In any case, it does not actually deviate from what the fact that juvenile YellowFin and BigEye loves hanging out with Skipjacks and as long as you fish with Purse Seiners you’ll catch them all… while at different ratios along the year.
When it comes to canned tuna, the best "eco-friendly" choice is Pole&Line (P&L) caught fish, and then a bit down the scale "FAD-free" purse seine caught fish.
Is being said that the volume of pole-and-line fish is not sufficient to meet the demand, I personally believe that the issue is costing. P&L makes to cans more expensive due to the higher cost of fishing per ton of product (a P&L catches in year what a Purse Seiner Catches in couple of months), and reality seems to be that the bulk of the consumers are not ready to pay X times more for can of P&L caught, just to satisfy their ethics. Hence "FAD-free" makes up the bulk of the "eco-friendly" product.
The interesting point is that "FAD-free" fishing is a return to school fishing, which the fleets were pushed away off by the “dolphin free” campaign in the 70's and early 80's. It is ironic that free school fishing is now being viewed by many NGO's as the more responsible and sustainable.
A truly wicked twist in this saga is that I heard now from various processors that with the influx of "FAD-free" fish, the canneries we are encountering a much higher percentage of fish with really “soft texture,” hence the levels of rejections and downgrading has increased.
A friend that is processing MSC certified skipjack (hence FAD-free), told me that for him MSC stands for Mushy Skipjack Canned :-)
This “soft texture” may have something to do with a higher level of enzymatic reactions, and the higher body temperature of fish caught while actively feeding in a school during the day, as opposed to fish caught while lazily circling a FAD in the very early mornings.
Free school fishing happens when tuna is feeding "out there". Skipjack feed predominantly on small pelagics, micro-crustaceans and some mollusks (squid). Stomach contents show a huge variety tho, so is obviously a highly opportunistic feeder. (It would eat its own juveniles as well)
From the fishes in the Skipjack diet, Scombers and Thyrsitops are quite represented, and both have high enzymatic contents in the stomach, that associated with the high level of enzymes in the stomach of Skipjacks while feeding (which is when are capturing them) is known to be associated with mush and soft meat.
And this is not just on tuna; we hated it when we were doing trawling for Hake and Hoki in the South Atlantic if the fish was feeding on sardines or anchoveta for the same reason, fish became a mush in no time
So, if the level of rejections has increased which means that the fish is sent to the fishmeal factory. Hence, more fish needs to be caught as to maintain production, (which is usually demand driven by contracts), so the whole situation it is going against one of its initial aims: catching less fish.
I think that if you had FAD closures for longer or 2 or 3 times a year, then it could achieve a balance... With an estimated 80000 to 120000 FADs deployed, there is no "magic bullet" solution for this... or for anything thing else in life actually :-)
The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) adopted harvest control rules for skipjack tuna on 26 May at its annual meeting in La Reunion, a decision jointly lauded by some industry groups and many environmental organizations. The proposal was led by the Maldives, with the support of Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania and Mozambique.
Fish Market in Male, Maldives
The new rules include the identification of target levels of fishing to keep skipjack tuna populations from falling below dangerously low levels. They also call for a reduction of the use of fish-aggregating devices, ban the use of aerial vehicles, including drones, to find tuna schools and prohibit the use of lights at night to attract tuna. This decision is the culmination of months of meetings and collaboration among numerous organisations including fishers, industry groups and retailers.
And why is important for the Pacific? Because the DWFN there and those in the WCPFC are almost the same (people and countries). The WCPFC has so far only adopted a work plan for the development of harvest strategies but not much more than that (wrote about it here). We have now a concrete example of a CMM (Conservation and Management Measure) that countries have to follow.
Harvest Control Rules (HCR) are key to a fisheries management mechanism broadly named Harvest Strategies (I wrote about it here).
The proposal for a Harvest Control Rule (HCR) for IO SKJ draws on SC recommendations, including the new guidance on reference points in cases where MSY-based reference points are difficult to estimate. This proposal uses the biomass limit reference point of 20% of the unfished level (BLIM = 0.2B0) and the target biomass reference point of 40% of the unfished level (BTARG = 0.4B0), consistent with the SC advice that reference points based on depletion level should be used for stocks where MSY-based reference points cannot be robustly estimated and with international conventions and current practices followed in other tuna RFMOs.
The proposed HCR has three control parameters that can be tuned to provide better management performance with respect to the Commission’s management objectives and the underlying dynamics of the stock. The values currently proposed for these control parameters should be considered as “reference” values. After consideration of the performance statistics arising from these evaluations, the reference values currently used in this proposal may be replaced with alternative values that the Commission considers more appropriate.
It is important to note that this proposal does not seek to define a permanent HCR for the Indian Ocean skipjack tuna fishery. Rather, it will be necessary to continue work on the development of alternative, potentially better performing, HCRs as more data, improved analysis methodologies, and better scientific understanding of the stock is developed.
While the decision to preemptively create harvest control rules for skipjack before any possible population collapse could occur was lauded, a lot of people are frustrated by the lack of a similar agreement on yellowfin tuna, which (as in the Pacific) is in a worst state and in need of better management.
Many times when asked about fisheries in the Pacific, I always quickly clarify that whatever little I know is all in the operational and technical side, wich is not the "upper" framework in which the region's fisheries are contextualized. To understand that frame you have to understand the region's diplomacy and geopolitics, and one of the people in the world that understand that at its best is Transform Aqorau, the ex PNA boss.
He wrote a chapter "How Tuna is Shaping Regional Diplomacy" in a much larger book called "The New Pacific Diplomacy" (published by the Australia National University Press) that brings together a range of analyses and perspectives on these dramatic new developments in Pacific diplomacy at sub-regional, regional and global levels, and in the key sectors of global negotiation for Pacific states – fisheries, climate change, decolonisation, and trade.
Transform's chapter, and the book in general, are fundamental reading if one aim to understand better not only the global context in wich fisheries operates and the "place" it has among all the other sectors.
I just quote the start and the end of the chapter as the set a reality that many critics don't see:
The geopolitical underpinnings of the region’s tuna management provide an interesting backdrop to this analysis. All of the world’s major trading states are involved in this fishery — Japan, Korea, the United States, the EU, and China. Japan has the longest presence in the region’s tuna fishery. More recently, China has become a major force in the longline fishery. The region’s tuna resources have become a key focal point for the prosecution of the strategic geopolitical interests of these powers. Access to the region’s tuna resources allows them a physical presence over a large geographic area of the Pacific, from which they can pursue their strategic interests.
I don't think that any other region in the world has such a power asymmetry in between resources owners and resources users. Tuna fisheries are not just fish to eat and money to be made... they are a geopolitical asset. This explains (to me at least) why subsidies are poured into maintaining a fishery that otherwise would be operated at much lower pressure levels.
He concludes:
The complexity of the dynamics in fisheries and the relationships between the Pacific Island states and their external partners is creating new challenges to the way these issues are addressed. The diplomacy of the past, the ‘Pacific Way’, and doing things by consensus is not going to work because of the complexities of the issues that the Pacific Island states now confront. These challenges raise questions about the efficacy of existing regional architectures, the role of nation states, and the need to explore models of integration that can best deliver outcomes for the various fisheries. The PNA arrangements, in which measures are legally binding and where a common currency is shared amongst VDS membership, might be a model that could be considered by other Pacific Island states. It is imperfect, but it has strengthened the negotiation hands of its members.
I have a great appreciation for the work has done at the helm of PNA, but more importantly (at least in my world view) for him personally as a very humble and calm man, I have known him for years now and learned a lot listening to him... and now reading him too!
The labour rules around fishing have been in the media a lot. The vessels owners from the DWFN in the aim to maximize profits are employing people from the most desperate backgrounds and nations to pay them less every year. And this is for me the real “race to bottom” in fishing.
Welcome to a Taiwanese Longliner
It used to be a good job that was open to pretty much anyone from any background, race and social strata… just do your job right and you'll be ok. But that reality is long gone. The job paid good enough money as long as you were ready to put the effort. It was great for a young guy to make a career, or educate himself, or start a business, or support his family or just make cash to get wasted! But that reality is long gone. I don't believe that a young guy that starts fishing today could make enough money to pay for a place to live and his university studies like I was lucky to do.
I think that is very sad. Working on a fishing boat is a worthwhile experience, fishing still is one of the few apprenticeship structures that still survive. You learn from your elders, you work as a team in a not very forgiving environment… your life depends on the guy next to you and his life depends on yours. Whatever much or little I achieved so far asperson and as professional, is mostly based on knowledge I learned or strengthened by working in fishing.
Years ago I fished in the Ocean Breeze (a NZ flagged purse seiner owned by Simunovich Fisheries) with Pedro Souza a 6th generation tuna fisherman from the Madeira Islands of the Atlantic coast of Portugal. His formal education was very limited, but he had the an immense accumulative knowledge of tuna fisheries. Every sunset he would gaze the horizon and tell me what fishing would be like the next day, and he was always right.
He would see in the horizon 'signs" that for him were big as buildings, but I barely distinguish them. Needless to say, I learned a lot from him, but most of his knowledge would go with him to his grave. None of his 3 kids continued with fishing, is just not attractive enough. Money is no good, long time away from home, hard physical work... most young people in developed countries have other alternatives. Hence going at sea is not attractive anymore except for those from really desperate backgrounds and countries that will be happy with very little, and even so they get abused.
Pedro Souza 2nd from the right, next to me Apolino Marques from Peru, the other 2 are the Gomez brothers also from Madeira. Simunovich Fisheries was a great company to work for, I have a life long respect and gratitude to them.
My colleagues at FFA worked with ILO to tackle the issue a fair labour practices in the Pacific fisheries. At least in the Pacific we are trying to make sure that Pacific Islanders get a fair share of what is after all their fish. So I was really pleased when this publication was released today. Besides the fact that they use many of my pictures.
I quote its contents:
Fishing is critical both to survival and subsistence of many Pacific Islanders, as well as long-term prosperity in the region.
Although the vast Pacific Ocean creates economic challenges for Pacific island countries – which are often small and isolated from large markets - the size and natural wealth of this ocean also contains extraordinary natural resources of fish, particularly tuna.
The Pacific Islands domestic tuna sector adds around US$446 million to the combined GDP of the region per annum, and fishing contributes to more than 10% to GDP in countries such as Tuvalu, Federate States of Micronesia and Kiribati.1
Although the Pacific region reaps important economic benefits from licensing fees for vessels catching fish in their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) – which are home to the world’s largest tuna fishery – there are still untapped opportunities to further benefit from this valuable resource.
More than 60% of the tuna caught from Pacific Island EEZs is harvested by foreign vessels and more than 85% is taken out of the region for processing, highlighting considerable scope to develop domestic industry. Pacific Islanders could not only benefit through domestic processing, but also increased employment on fishing vessels, which currently employ relatively few workers from the region.
Skipper of a P&L vessel from NFD in the Solomon Islands, with well paid 100% local crew it was one of the happiest vessels I ever worked. Everyone had training and reasonable time at home. Unfortunately companies like NFD are the exception and not the norm
In 2015, the Forum Fisheries Agency developed a Regional Roadmap for Sustainable Pacific Fisheries, approved by the Pacific Island leaders, which sets the direction for future management of this industry. The Roadmap identifies seven clear goals for oceanic and coastal fisheries which member states have committed to achieve over the next ten years. Among them is the important goal of creating 18,000 new jobs in the tuna industry within the next decade – which would include employment in tuna processing, vessel crew, observers and fisheries management staff.
Current figures indicate that there are around 18,000 jobs currently held by Pacific Islanders in the sector, requiring a doubling of jobs to meet the goal.
While high unemployment figures in many parts of the Pacific certainly suggest a need for greater opportunities in the fishing sector, it is important above else to ensure that these jobs are decent and safe.
Fishers commonly have conditions of work that are vastly different from those experienced by workers in other sectors. The fatality rate of fishers is typically several times higher than for other workers. Fishing is hazardous even compared with such occupations as fire-fighting and mining. Being out at sea often means being away from professional medical care, which can be particularly dangerous in the case of serious accidents.
Many fishers live as well as work in their vessels, in conditions that can be cramped and congested. There may be long periods away from home and very long working hours. Access to adequate food and drinking water – as well as to recreational facilities when fishers are off-duty – can be an issue. Fatigue, linked to long hours, has been identified as a serious problem.
There are other features that make the fishing sector different. For example, fishers are often paid on the basis of a share of the value of fish caught, in whole or in part, by the vessel (rather than receiving a fixed wage). Fishers may not be employees in the conventional sense, for a great number are owner-operators or considered to be self-employed.
All this means that the sorts of procedures and safeguards which may be in place for workers working in shore-based occupations and industries may not be appropriate or effective, thus contributing to a “decent work deficit” for fishers.
The ILO Convention on Work in Fishing (C188) was adopted in 2007 with overwhelming support from governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations around the world. It covers a broad range of issues particular to the fishing industry, including minimum age for work, minimum standards for work agreements, rest periods, standards for living conditions and food on board, occupational safety and health and basic medical care (see on Key Provisions of C188).
It is important to ensure that Pacific Island countries have a strong institutional and legislative framework, and an effective training regime to prepare and support fishers, to ensure that these workers can be safe and make a decent living through which they can support themselves and their families.
Ensuring good standards of work isn’t just good for workers, but also for business
The fisheries sector has been connected with slave labour and bondage in some parts of the world. The United States Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report has noted evidence of trafficking in this sector in parts of Asia, as well as in some Pacific Island countries.
This is a terrible risk for the fishers concerned, but also has consequences for the marketing of seafood products from the countries which are thought to be connected with such exploitation. Not only may consumers refuse to buy brands that are associated with abuse of workers, but large markets such as the EU may boycott exports from a country that is given a ‘red card’ under its illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) regulation.3
Thus, creating an environment where fishers’ rights are protected isn’t just good for human rights. It’s also smart for maintaining good brand reputation and increasing exports.
Challenges exist to creating decent work
Employment conditions can vary significantly between different vessels and types of vessels. Ensuring good working conditions can be particularly challenging in the longline fisheries where very cheap labour is readily available and living and working conditions can be sub-standard.
However, establishing more rigorous and standardised fishers’ work agreements, or minimum elements of such contracts, is possible, and can be an effective strategy to protect fishers.
The ILO’s Work in Fishing Convention, 2007 (No. 188), and the accompanying Work in Fishing Recommendation, 2007 (No. 199) set important standards for safe and decent employment on fishing vessels (see on Key Provisions of C188 below).
Another important priority is to ensure that Pacific Island workers are properly trained and more likely to be recruited by companies operating in the region.
Some of the key priorities going forward are:
A flag state in relation to a fishing vessel, is the State under whose laws the fishing vessel is registered or licensed. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, in Article 94, provides, among other things, that “every State shall effectively exercise its jurisdiction and control in administrative, technical and social matters over ships flying its flag”. This includes fishing vessels. Convention No. 188 sets out that a State “shall effectively exercise its jurisdiction and control over vessels that fly its flag by establishing a system for ensuring compliance with the requirements of this Convention…”
Port states are those in whose ports foreign fishing vessels may stop. Port states which ratify C.188 may inspect the conditions of such foreign fishing vessels (‘exercising port state control’) for compliance with the Convention and may take action when conditions on board are found to present a hazard to the safety and health of the crew.
The Convention on Work in Fishing addresses issues essential to ensuring decent work on fishing vessels. In particular, the Convention:
While most of what I write is about is around present-day fisheries, this paper tickled my Marine Biologist's interest. It has a very interesting illustration and conclusion.
The paper by Elizabeth Sibert and colleagues was published here, but I got the info from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography news. These researchers identify three periods of open ocean community structure driven by competition from other organisms, but not climate change.
They review 85 million years of fish fossil records (microscopic fossil fish teeth and mineralized shark scales known as denticles preserved in sediments on the seafloor) and found that the basic structure of the ocean ecosystem – the ratio of fish compared to elasmobranchs such as sharks, skates, and rays – has remained stable for periods of tens of millions of years, despite extreme environmental changes caused by climate shifts of the past.
The team found that there have been two major events in which the make-up of ocean life changed substantially. One of those events was the Cretaceous/Palaeogene mass extinction 66 million years ago to which scientists attribute the disappearance of dinosaurs. Sibert and colleagues had earlier found that the abundance and diversity of fishes exploded once many of their main predators went extinct. Shark abundance, however, neither rose nor fell at the extinction.
For the next 45 million years, the ratio of sharks and fishes remained stable, while absolute abundances of both groups rose and fell in concert alongside changes in global climate, suggesting that the structure of the ecosystem was resilient to climate change.
Another transition 20 million years ago saw a sharp drop-off in the number of sharks in the world’s oceans, alongside a dramatic increase in variability of fish abundance, suggesting that sharks suddenly spent considerably less time in the open ocean ecosystem. The researchers conclude that what triggered changes in the community structure has to do primarily with how competition with other marine organisms – including plankton, invertebrates, seabirds, and marine mammals – influenced the balance of life in the oceans.
“It is really striking that the community structure is so stable during each of these long intervals,” said Sibert. “It shows that it takes a major disaster or evolutionary regime shift to change fundamentally how the consumers in the ocean interact.”
The researchers concluded that drastic swings in global climate, including periods of intense warming analogous to what Earth is experiencing at present, did little to alter the long-term structure of the marine vertebrate community. Sibert said those episodes from prehistory, though, do not serve as a guide for potential changes in marine ecosystem structure today, since the rate of today’s modern global climate change is much faster than anything experienced in the past, and the impact of human interactions with the oceans has no precedent.
Sibert’s co-author, Scripps paleobiologist Richard Norris, said that during the transition from “Cretaceous” oceans to “Paleogene” oceans 66 million years ago saw the disappearance of highly abundant invertebrate organisms called ammonites. Their mass extinction released fishes from predation and allowed them to explode in abundance in the warm greenhouse world of the Paleogene. Later, in the Modern ocean system, the evolutionary diversification of marine mammals, seabirds and large pelagic fish that compete with sharks, alongside the dramatic increase in variability of fish production, may have driven shark abundance down in the open ocean.
Since 2007 different international organizations have contracted me to write a Seafood EU Market Access conditions type guide/manual aimed to explain in "an easy way" what is needed to export to the EU, and it has never been an easy task.
Exporting seafood to the EU is not an obligation, and it requires an equal amount of effort by the government authorities and the private sector of the exporting countries. Compliance and understanding of the required systems of official assurances are paramount to access the EU market.
In 2007 ITC (International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the WTO and the UN) published the 2 first editions under the name of "How to export seafood to the EU", then SIPPO in 2011 requested an updated version that included a guide to the main Ecolabels called "EU Market Access (Health and IUU) & Eco-labelling for Fishery and Aquaculture Products" and here in Spanish. Then again in early 2015 new written version was published (but without Ecolabels section) in English and Spanish but going much deeper into the EU IUU Catch Certification and displaying the very basics of the Certification of Origin.
This time, I'm going as a "solo publisher" with this updated edition of my EU Market Access for Fishery and Aquaculture Products version 2016.
This book (60 pages) is a guideline to the regulatory requirements for exporting seafood products to the European Union. It describes the EU system of official assurances, the main regulations, requirements for the Competent Authorities and operators along the value chain with regards to health and “non-IUU” Catch Certification.
Each chapter has a “basics” section at the opening, and then further subsections develop some of the most important topics related to the subject.
Import rules for fish and fisheries products are harmonized, meaning that the same rules apply in all EU countries. For non-EU countries, the European Commission is the negotiating partner that defines import conditions and certification requirements.
The two most important regulations affecting fish and fishery products seek, among other objectives, to protect final consumers’ health and close EU markets from products originated from Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing activities. Under these regulations all the fishing products have to be captured, manipulated, elaborated, transported and delivered following standards that are established by European legislators, taking into account European realities and addressed to European citizens.
While they are two “technical” regulatory sets (Health and IUU) and a trade one (Origin) that the exporting country needs to comply with, the most complex requirements are with health, so it is fair to say that the “main” authorisation requirement is the one in place for health certification.
The EU sees aquaculture products from a “farming” perspective, so their importation runs under a “parallel system” as the value chain from the farms to the processors has to comply with the same requirements for that of wild caught fish. But on top of that, they need to comply with an “extra” control system in the form of an annual control plan run by the Competent Authority (CA) on heavy metals, contaminants, residues of pesticides and veterinary drugs.
This publication should be used as an initial reading to understand the very basics. It is strongly recommended that you follow up with all the original references available in the last chapter with the links to download all the regualtions and resources.
Thailand, IUU fishing, the labor conditions on some of their vessels are a lot on the news at the moment (and I'm in Thailand at the moment). They have been hit (justifiably) from a lot of angles: EU IUU yellow cards, slave labor exposes, Greenpeace campaigns, and the lot.
On the way to a Bangkok party?
I'm not going to even try to dissect the whole tangled mess. But yes... Thailand has not been particularly clean, but then nor they have been push to be clean by the international community, nor the clients. They have a very efficient and effective production system, they have been good on the food safety side, but as it comes out now their fisheries controls have been quite useless.
Not surprisingly they are running every where now trying to plug holes, good on them... however there is always a risk to choke when you re trying to swallow to much. The signing of the FAO PSMA is however very significant, and if they manage to implement it, it could turn the tide a bit!
I'll quote from my friend Pramod's blog, as he is much better writer than I'm and hit the sport on the situation
Thailand is a major player in global seafood trade and processing of fishery products. Among the major fish producer countries Thailand was ranked 14 in 2012 with capture fisheries landings of more than 1.6 million tonnes. However, Thailand exhibits its dominance as the third largest exporter of seafood in the world (8.1% of the global seafood exports valued at 8079 million US$ in 2012) after China and Norway.
With bulk of the production dependent on imported raw material from other countries ports play a major role in entry of products for both legal and illegal origin. Currently, very little is known about the extent of inspections in Thai fishing ports? With a sprawling network of fishing ports spread across Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea, more than 15 ports cater large fishing vessels while 12 smaller ports cater imports for smaller vessels from Malaysia, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Vessels wishing entry are required to inform authorities at least 48 hours in advance and both Thai port authorities and the Department of Fisheries have the authority to deny entry for foreign vessels. In most cases, fishing boats are allowed to land.
In order to strengthen catch inspections Thailand is also developed an electronic system for the traceability of fish and fishery products (under the guidance of my friend Gilles Hosch) . Under the new Royal Ordinance on Fisheries B.E. 2558 (2015) that came into effect from November last year more intense inspections are required to deny entry to illegal vessels and strengthen inspections at ports (However is not working yet)
Thai has some massive Challenges:
For the sake of world fisheries, I hope they get the act together and are able to deliver. While we are trying to choke IUU from the capture side, countries are processing the IUU fish that still being fished, and many fingers point here.
As every two years, in late May the tuna commercialisation world meets in Bangkok. Is no doubt the biggest event of its kind and a total talk fest. I'm again being invited to talk about the developments in fisheries controls we are doing in the Pacific, and this year I focused on the eCDS initiative.
I'm always ambivalent about my presence here. Almost every speaker mentions sustainability, and fight against IUU and the whole lot. But then, the DWFN keep adding capacity, finding gaps in the system, employing people from the most desperate backgrounds and nations to pay them less every year, while milking to the max the subsidies cow.
On the other side, in this world if you are not seated at the table, you are dinner. So I learn to accept that these are the rules of the game, and here is a description of the players.
I have to admit that I appreciate INFOFISH invitations to be a speaker at all their Tuna events while my message is technical, I'm very forwards with the disparity in between what I hear in this meetings and what I see in the Pacific.
Pacific Island Developing States have, in my opinion, invested proportionately much more than the DWFN in MCS and Fisheries Information Management Systems. Particularly in comparison with the nations with the highest numbers of fishing vessels in the region, such as China, Taiwan and Korea. These nations have virtually not supported any Authorities strengthening programmes, nor seem to put much effort into their obligations to control they own vessels IUU fishing, as specified by various international treaties.
This year my presentation finished with one of my usual questions:
How fair is expecting the Fisheries Authorities of small developing coastal and port states, to take on the burden of controlling the vessels of rich Distant Waters Fishing Nations that neglect their obligations, while subsidizing their fleet with amounts that far exceed the global estimates of IUU fishing?
Every two months the FFA Trade and Industry News* gets published and is always good reading (if you are into Tuna news of course!). This edition has one article that I will reproduce, since is a topic I'm quite interested, does not really gets much attention, and is related to "leakage" an effect of transhipping I wrote about before.
The utilization of purse seine bycatch that is unloaded during transshipment in Pacific Island country ports is a relatively small, but important aspect of transshipment that provides benefits to PICs. The ports of Majuro, Tarawa, Pohnpei, Rabaul and Honiara have hosted the largest volumes of transshipment activity in the WCPO, roughly one million tonnes in total in recent years**.
The utilization of purse seine bycatch (rainbow runner, oceanic triggerfish and others), as well as that of small target tunas, including those damaged during fishing or freezing operations, can provide various benefits to Pacific Island locations where transshipment takes place.
Activities relating to utilization of these segments of the purse seine catch are usually unrecorded and are for the most part unregulated. Recent estimates have put the total annual volume of bycatch and undersized or damaged target tunas that are unloaded for local consumption in the five major transshipment ports at between 1,000 to 1,500 tonnes***.
Cash or barter transactions with vessel captains, crews, middlemen and others creates a “grey economy” that can provide seasonal employment and income to the participants, as well as an additional protein source for consumers. On the negative side, unregulated transfer of bycatch from fishing vessels may have some detrimental social impacts relating to women trading sex for fish, as well as food safety issues.
The various means of unloading, distributing, marketing and otherwise disposing of this unwanted (by the vessel) catch depends on a variety of factors, some of which are unique to the port concerned. In Majuro for example, the local preference for reef fish means that brine frozen bycatch and unwanted tunas have a very limited local market. By comparison, the estimated 600+ tons unloaded annually in Solomon Islands finds a ready market in an urban population that includes a large number of low wage earners and a large central market in close proximity to transshipping activities in Honiara. In Rabaul and Pohnpei the apparent suppression of or lack of interest in regularized marketing has resulted in back-door ‘leakage’ that nevertheless finds its way to local consumers by a variety of means. One of the main concerns in Tarawa has been competition with local fishermen that has been addressed in the past by allowing only one marketer of unloaded bycatch and designating certain areas on the atoll that are off-limits to its marketing.
There are several hurdles to improving the benefits to PICs from bycatch and small tuna unloaded in transshipment ports, not the least of which is a lack of data on these activities at almost every level. In spite of most transshipment ports being in or near urban areas, these locations are small on even a regional scale and are relatively isolated from potential markets for value-added products. The loining plant in Majuro for example identified high freight costs to world markets for its fish meal as one of the major factors that make the product only marginally profitable.
Currently, the further development of reliable supply chains to local markets are also hindered by several factors, including the impacts of FAD bans which can lower bycatch volumes and changing fishing conditions that can alter transshipping patterns amongst the ports concerned. At least one organization, ISSF, has undertaken studies on a global basis to address some of these issues and has funded one pilot project in the region to help identify means by which benefits to PICs can be increased****.
It is clear, however, that ‘one size will not fit all’ situations and this needs to be kept in mind when regulatory or other controls on unloaded bycatch are considered.
* Prepared for the FFA Fisheries Development Division by Dr Liam Campling, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, Dr Elizabeth Havice, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Mike McCoy, independent consultant, all Consultant Fisheries Trade and Market Intelligence Analysts, Fisheries Development Division, FFA.
** Unpublished return port data; author’s own analysis
*** A. Lewis, pers. comm.; author’s own analysis
**** A. Lewis, Exploration of Market Viability for the Full Catch Retention of Non-Tuna Species in Purse Seine Fisheries: Interim Report, ISSF Technical Report 2014-12, ISSF, December 2014. Available at: http://www. iss-foundation.org
A new World Bank report (released for public comment last week at the annual Forum Fisheries Committee Meeting in Port Vila) says better management of tuna fisheries can help Pacific Island countries gain as much as US$344 million per year in additional sustainable revenues and create 7,500 to 15,000 jobs by 2040.
His future is in that tuna
While I’m always bit cautious of this type of long term projections (how do we numerically account for the key drivers of fisheries non sustainability: greed and selfishness?), it is a good read with well researched content, lots of economics (is the World Bank after all), and very well referenced to many of my friends and colleagues. You can download it here (130 pages)
I will only reference the summary here:
Pacific Island countries are endowed with valuable tuna resources. The stocks of four tuna species in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) – a region that includes the Pacific Island countries (PICs) and extends south below New Zealand and north to the Bering Sea to cover some 8 percent of the global ocean - collectively form the basis of one of the world’s largest and most valuable fisheries. This fishery supplies roughly 60 percent of the world’s tuna from what are some of the last healthy tuna stocks. PIC waters alone cover half of the WCPO region and supply some 34 percent of the world’s tuna catch each year, with an estimated delivered value to processors on the order of US$3.4 billion in recent years. From this endowment PICs received net economic benefits on the order of US$500 million in 2013, the majority of which came from the purse seine fishery in the waters of countries near the equator. While not distributed evenly, these benefits have been significant for some PICs, for example with public revenues estimated to be equivalent to 36 percent of GDP in Tuvalu, 32 percent in Kiribati, and 10 percent in FSM, and constituting a much higher proportion of the total public budget (e.g. 63 percent in Kiribati in 2012).
These resources will need to make bigger economic contributions to help avoid a ‘low-growth future’ in the region. Despite this tremendous natural endowment, the rate of economic growth in many (though not all) PICs has generally been low over the last decade, and if this trend were to continue over the next 25 years, with only Fiji and Palau’s gross domestic product GDP per capita growing at a rate higher than two percent annually, many PICs will fall significantly behind other countries, with per capita GDP levels only moderately higher than at present. One of the few opportunities to avoid this ‘low-growth future’ is utilization of the region’s tuna resources.
This report describes a scenario for the year 2040 where this might plausibly happen. The report aims to look forward over the next 25 years, to suggest some viable answers to the questions: in a plausible best case scenario, how much more could the WCPO tuna resources contribute to Pacific Island countries’ economies by the year 2040, and what policy decisions would be required from the countries? In complement, what would be the impacts and benefits in terms of employment and food security of these policy decisions? Building upon the 2010 Future of Fisheries report and subsequent Regional Roadmap for Sustainable Pacific Fisheries endorsed by Forum Leaders in 2015, the report develops a best-case scenario for the tuna fisheries in the year 2040, identifying the potential additional economic contributions to PICs, and proposing further detail on likely policy decisions that would need to be taken. The report does not aim to provide predictions or forecasts of the future, but rather a plausible story based on recent trends and expected future directions that can communicate risks and opportunities to inform policy-making – and thereby provide a better understanding of the policy choices in the upcoming decades and highlight present-day developments.
Illustration of the WCPO Purse Seine Tuna Fishery Value Chain in 2013 & Net Economic Benefits to Pacific Island Countries
As a starting point, some of the recent trends in the fisheries have been summarized, including:
Illustration of WCPO Long-Line Tuna Fishery Value Chains in 2013 and Estimated Net Economic Benefits to Pacific Island Countries
Against the backdrop of these trends, a number of key external forces are expected to drive the performance of WCPO tuna fisheries over the next 25 years, including climate change, markets and the economy, science and technology, demographic changes and external governance. Expected changes include:
Taking into account past trends and expected external drivers of performance, the following potential scenario can be described for the region’s tuna fisheries in 2040, dependent upon implementation of the policy decisions outlined in the Regional Roadmap for Sustainable Pacific Fisheries: By 2040, subregional coalitions of PICs are entrenched around the three tuna fisheries – purse seine, tropical longline and southern longline, with norms of transparency and trust established, as well as flexible formulas to distribute the returns on access in order to accommodate spatial shifts in the stocks as impacts from climate change are felt. Countries continue to see greater benefits from cooperation to manage the tuna stocks as shared natural capital assets, and many count upon their annual returns for stability funds and public investment. Working together, these coalitions set targets for maintaining minimum sizes of the four tuna stocks as a basis for firm catch limits from the waters under their jurisdiction, based on regular assessments from the world’s top tuna biologists at SPC. The coalition of countries around the equator – comprised largely of PNA members - operates a well-functioning organization governed by a permanent board of global experts from within the region, with a secretariat of professional staff from strong education and training programs within the region, built over recent years with public revenues from the fisheries.
Similarly, the Tokelau Arrangement’s successor is governed by a permanent board with a well-staffed secretariat. Staff in both organizations are highly skilled and focus on managing registries of tuna catch quota, monitoring trends in use and synthesizing key biological, ecological and economic research for the board, as well as managing quota auctions. The Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) provides monitoring and surveillance support, among other services, to the coalitions, and is recognized as a world leader in cutting-edge surveillance technology.
Seeing a future constraint on returns and potential external influence from the WCPFC, PNA members moved quickly in 2017 - 2018 to invest in research and development for by-catch reduction, and to implement an innovative fish aggregating device (FAD) licensing scheme to spur industry investment – particularly given projected eastward shifts in distribution of the stock. The combination of technology advances and some initially painful catch reductions, coordinated with similar action through the longline VDS, placed the bigeye stock on a slow recovery path, with biomass eventually and steadily increasing towards 40 percent of unfished levels. Albacore, skipjack and yellowfin stocks continue to remain healthy in 2040, with a slightly stricter target reference point to provide some reserve should climate change make it necessary. These stocks provide the world’s last healthy tuna stocks and have become an even more international fishery system, as global demand for tuna products has remained steady with Asian and Middle Eastern markets becoming more mature.
Inclusion of Indonesia in the purse seine and tropical longline arrangements, and the Philippines in the former, enhanced the total allowable catch limits for both and placed most of the world’s skipjack under robust management. Strong restrictions for fishing on the high seas, linked to access to national waters, was recognized in 2020 by the WCPFC, and even with shifting stocks, high seas fishing is minimal. Some three quarters of the southern albacore longline fishery operates on rules set through successors to the Tokelau Arrangement, with profitability on an upward trend.
As an example, gradually over the years PNA members enhanced the flexibility of fishing vessel day trading among them while increasing durability of allocations – with some countries moving slowly in order to give domestic fleets time to adjust and improve efficiency (and thereby maintain contributions to local value added). Vessel days with longer duration were progressively issued to companies for higher returns (e.g. for a five-year duration instead of one year), or in some cases in consideration of local investment.
Continued trials in pooling with successful results, as well as improved auction designs, led to an agreement whereby the PNA members directed the secretariat to pool all access rights, allocated via auctions, with revenues distributed to parties via the agreed formula. Several parties opt to continue to invest access revenues in processing clusters, reducing the total fishing effort allowed and their distribution accordingly.
After years of investment in effort adjustments at the individual vessel level, the parties made sufficient preparations for a transition of rules towards a quota-system. Secondary markets for quota developed, regulated by the parties and enhancing overall fleet efficiency. Increased efficiency of fishing operations, together with the enhanced visibility and reduced risk for firms, led to significant investment in technology for higher quality products, generating value throughout the supply chain. As a result of healthy fish stocks and a well-functioning access market, revenues are between 50 percent higher and double 2015 levels in real terms (after management costs and concessions for domestic processing are subtracted).
Building off of healthy stocks and efficiently-regulated access, the PNA countries (plus Indonesia and the Philippines) have created a trading company that controls much of supply to processors and in some cases direct to retailers, supported by freezing/storage facilities in key hubs throughout the region. A number of PICs have well-developed vessel support systems that provide services to the fleets. Utilizing the pooled access regime, several countries exchange revenue distributions for allocations to secure access for coastal tuna fisheries developed through nearshore FAD networks to help ensure sufficient flow of food fish. This process began in the 2020s in advance of continued stagnation in coastal fisheries. Some countries have established dedicated coastal community funds with tuna revenues, to invest in reef restoration and key infrastructure and social goods. Additionally, countries with relatively large populations near ports or transshipment hubs, e.g. PNG and Solomon Islands, trial measures to support greater retention and local sale of purse seine by-catch (not including bigeye).
As a result of the policy strategies and decisions pursued under the Regional Roadmap for Sustainable Pacific Fisheries, public revenues are some US$177 to 345 million per year higher for PICs in real terms, after concessions for onshore investment and investments in administration, monitoring and surveillance are subtracted. A number of countries have increased local value added by a combined US$88 million per year in real terms, due to processing clusters and vessel service hubs (though many processing facilities operate under capacity and at a loss given erosion of European trade preferences). These efforts have created some 7,500 to 15,000 additional jobs in the region for processing, without including the additional employment from service hubs. Over time an Oceanic Tuna Export Company (OTEC) could develop and generate significant profits shared, as well as employment at storage facilities throughout the region.
The policy strategies leading to this potential scenario in 2040 can be summarized as:
I like to keep it varied in my job, and once in while I take on a challenge that gets me away from Tuna, CDS, IUU, Data, Information Management Systems and so on. On this occasion, I go back to basics... catching fish to eat and survive.
resource owners and users
This is a contract with an organisation that I have not work before, nor I associated a lot to Fisheries, APEC. But in their region fishis important for food security, these products that originate from subsistence or small-scale fishery require good handling practices on board in the landing phase. Since a great percentage of the catch, up to 30% in some cases, is lost due to poor handling practices.
Therefore, a proper management and efficiency throughout the core of the supply chain can increase the economic growth of the fishery communities, open new job positions for women and strengthen food security; consequently, we will need fewer marine resources contributing to the conservation of the fish stock.
The aim of the project is to develop a manual to facilitate the improvement of the catch condition of subsistence fishers (aiming at food security) by reducing economic losses and overfishing by the deterioration of fish products that were not properly handled, achieving that consumers receive high-quality products.
The social and economic importance of small-scale and subsistence fisheries are frequently undervalued, and they are rarely effectively managed. There is now growing consensus on how these fisheries could be managed for sustainability and to minimise the risks of crossing undesirable thresholds.
Most of these fisheries are open access in nature and entry into the fishery remains unrestricted. Small-scale fisheries are highly dynamic, labour intensive and usually not integrated with local marketing arrangements. Small-scale fishers, their families and communities are critically dependent on fish for their food and livelihood security and are extremely vulnerable to external pressures and shocks
After a substantial amount of research and in consultation with different representatives from the APEC economies, I proposed that the manual should be aimed at the common factors among their realities:
I explain this (in Spanish) in this video
Uploaded by SANIPES TV on 2016-05-05.
Normally if don't do much in the Atlantic anymore (even if I started there). But my friend Pedro Güemes is now the Publicity and Tag Recovery Coordinator Atlantic Ocean Tropical Tuna Tagging Programme (AOTTP), a big job.
My friend Cynthia Wickham tagging tuna in middle of the Pacific
The overall objective of the Atlantic Ocean Tropical Tuna Tagging Programme (AOTTP) is to contribute to the food security and economic growth of the Atlantic coastal states by ensuring sustainable management of their tropical tuna resources. Specifically the AOTTP will use the information it collects on tuna stocks in the Atlantic to provide improved and updated scientific advice to developing coastal states, and other Contracting Parties, enabling them to adopt appropriate Conservation and Management Measures (CMMs) for tunas in the framework of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
AOTTP will collect tag-recapture, and associated data, for the main tropical tuna species in the Atlantic Ocean. Neritic species will also be tagged in an ad hoc manner. The data will be used to calculate key population parameters in support of stock assessments (e.g. growth rates, natural mortality, exploitation rates and stock structure) and subsequent management. Scientists from relevant Contracting Parties of ICCAT will be trained in tagging, data-collection and the use of tagging data in stock assessment and management.
And they are calling for tenders to the First Tagging Recovery Programme (January 2016 to June 2017) outlined in the External Action of the European Union DCI- FOOD/2015/ 361-161, and approved by the AOTTP Steering Committee.
Tuna Tagging is vital from the scientific perspective and a fun to be on. If you belong to a fisheries institution, NGOs, University and have the chance to form a consortium to tender for it, have a go.
The document tenders are here in English and here in Spanish
Here in the Pacific SPC are world references n the issue and sure we can lend a hand, even if we are way to far to provide vessels and so on. See some of the videos that show what and how is done.
A short movie about the latest PNG tuna tagging cruise in January 2012. Project funded by PNG NFA and jointly undertaken with SPC's Oceanic Fisheries Programme. For more information please visit: www.spc.int/tagging. Music by Naio. Images by Malo Hosken (SPC).
When you work in Fisheries you see plenty of "horrors" more than "errors" in the press. I always find it intriguing that if in any other area of work, if you say something wrong or do not check your sources, you not doing your job right and get done, fired, demoted and so on. The press seems to get away without much... I was saddened to read an article from one of my favourites media outlets Radio NZ (RNZ) getting it very wrong.
RNZ is a well-respected media for fisheries news in the Pacific, and on this occasion, it fell below standard
In an article "Kiribati yellow carded over fishing practice" (a fact I blogged about it here) they started right... but then they say:
" Kiribati is now only one step away from a 'red card', which would mean fish caught within its waters would be banned in the European Union."
Wrong: A "red card" which means that the country is declared a "Non-Cooperating "country" implies that fish caught in the Kiribati-flagged vessel cannot be imported into the EU under the principles of the EU IIU regulation 1005/2008. However, as Kiribati is not authorised to export fish and fishery products to the EU since its Sanitary Competent Authority is not recognised as equivalent to those of the EU member states. Hence, even if they were to move to red, the impact would be nil since at the present there is no direct fisheries trade in between Kiribati and the EU.
"Papua New Guinea has a 'red card' and fish caught in its waters is banned from being sold in the EU"
Very Wrng: PNG had a yellow card that was lifted in October 2015. Trade in between PNG (that is authorised from the sanitary perspective) and the EU was never stopped.
I wrote to then to correct them, not because I think I'm pedantic about the true... is just that is not right. So if you get to see this type of mistakes in your media... drop them a line and correct the record.
Taken together, the seven most commercially important tuna species are among the most economically valuable fishes on the planet. In 2014, the volume of landed tuna rose to 4.99 million metric tons with an estimated dock value of $9.8 billion. The estimated end value remained similar to that in 2012 due to falling fish prices and was $32.9 billion, or $42.2 billion when including the full canned product price.
These are some of the conclusions of a report commissioned by Pew Trust to my colleagues Graeme Macfadyen and Vincent Defaux (see and downloaded it from here as it is a very good reference)
While the overall numbers do not reflect the total worth of the seven species, they provide a useful estimate of the contribution made by commercial tuna fisheries to the global economy. A total value of tuna, incorporating sport fishing and in-the-water ecosystem benefits of living tunas, among other things, would be much higher. Therefore, these numbers should be considered conservative.
The methodology used to calculate these global estimates allows for values to be broken down by region, species, and fishing gear.
The Pacific Ocean supports the world’s largest tuna fisheries. Nearly three-quarters of tuna landings in 2012 and 2014 came from these waters, and sales of tuna from the Pacific made up two-thirds of the global dock value and end value in both years.
Commercially landed Pacific tuna generated dock values of more than $6.5 billion in 2012 and $5 billion in 2014. The end value of Pacific tuna surpassed $17 billion in both years. When accounting for the full price of canned tuna, these values were more than $22 billion (in nominal dollars) in both years. Unfortunately, only a pitiful % of that stays in the hands of the Pacific Island Countries.
Indian Ocean tuna fisheries run a distant second, followed by the Atlantic and Southern oceans. The Southern Ocean’s small piece of the global pie is a result of fisheries targeting only southern bluefin. Still, the end value of Southern Ocean tuna is significant (about $500 million).
Based on data reported to the world’s regional fisheries management bodies, the top tuna-fishing nation is Indonesia, with total landings in 2014 of more than 620,000 metric tons. Indonesia’s vessels fish mainly in the eastern Indian and western Pacific oceans, in contrast to several other major fishing nations that support large global fleets.
Most of these nations have diverse fleets, with boats that fish using all gear types and target all species. Six of the top 10—Japan; Taiwan, Province of China; the United States; Korea; Spain; and France—have large global fleets that can fish far from their home waters. The Asian and European fleets, in particular, fish all major ocean basins and land tuna at ports around the world.
The remaining top nations have very large local or regional fleets that fish in the highly productive eastern tropical Pacific (Ecuador) or western and central tropical Pacific (the Philippines and Papua New Guinea).
The large majority of tuna landed worldwide is taken by purse seine fishing vessels, which use very large nets to encircle entire schools of fish. Purse seiners target primarily skipjack and yellowfin, and most tuna caught this way is destined for canneries. Because of the large volumes of these two species captured by purse seine, this gear type accounts for more revenue than any other.
In 2012 and 2014, a relatively small number of large purse seine vessels caught approximately two-thirds of all landed tuna. That accounted for about half of the dock value and end value of all tuna fisheries.
This report represents the first attempt to develop a rigorous estimate of the global value of tuna fisheries. Because this analysis is based solely on available commercial data, the value of the world’s tuna populations likely far exceeds the $42.2 billion estimated here. Despite being a conservative estimate, the report’s findings—that tuna fisheries contribute tens of billions of dollars to the global economy—indicate the critical importance of ensuring that all commercially fished tuna species are managed sustainably.
To conserve, and build on, the wealth that tuna fisheries generate, steps are needed to improve the precautionary management of tuna populations globally. Managers should:
With these three actions, fisheries managers can work to remove the short-term politics from decision-making. Doing that would secure strong financial returns in tuna fisheries while ensuring the health of marine ecosystems.
Much has been on the news on another Yellow Card for the Pacific, this time Kiribati. And this is significant.
2014 figures
The EU press releases says:
The EU's warning to Kiribati is based on concerns about the country's capacity to control fishing activities by foreign fleets. There are serious risks that illegally caught fish could be laundered through the ports of Kiribati, as they do not have robust traceability systems in place for fisheries products. Kiribati's unwillingness to share important information on third country vessels operating in their waters undermines the Commission's work to improve transparency and sustainability of tuna resources in the Western and Central Pacific.
A couple of DG MARE officers were there earlier this year and did an assessment of the situation, and their results (and the yellow) did not come as a surprise to many people in the game.
And while a red would only impact a few foreign DWFN vessels that are flagged there, the significance for me comes from two non-related factors:
1) In 2014 (and similarly in 2015 I assume) more Tuna was caught in the Kiribati EEZ than in the Whole Eastern Pacific ocean and a bit less than in the whole Indian Ocean. No country has more tuna in its waters than Kiribati and Tarawa is (allegedly) the busiest Tuna transshipping port in the Pacific.
2) Kiribati is one of two countries in the Pacific (the other one is the Cooks) that actually has/had a "Fisheries Partnership Agreement" with the EU. This brings an interesting twist to the fact that the EU is in a fisheries agreement with a country that seems (in the own views) a non-totally cooperating country in terms of IUU fishing.
From the personal perspective, it looks like i may be spending more time there... since helping countries out of yellow seems to have become part of my staple workload (Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG so far, and allegedly Solomons quite soon) :-)
From the South Pacific to the Caribbean small-scale fisherwomen and processing operators are be the bedrock of food security in many communities, bringing home dependable income and healthy protein when other sources fail.
The best of fisheries
Their work nurtures their families and can dramatically impact conservation efforts — yet they have been all but ignored by researchers and policymakers.
These are the conclusions of this Oceana report/study that you should read from here please.
Is a sobering reading and I agree (based on my own personal experience) to most of it.
Furthermore, while in my line of work most of my colleagues and bosses are male, the few where I had woman colleagues and specially bosses have been the best in terms of the working relationships and the results achieved. Somehow the ego/testosterone driven issues placate and everyone looks into results. I wish this was to happen more often.
You know things get done when Charlyn and Soni are involved :-)
My friend Gilles recommended me this blog post, and it raises many valid questions and point, so I think is worth sharing.
The original is by André Standing (here), and has an awesome cover picture.
IUU fishing has become one of the main concerns for a number of organisations working on fisheries, including in developing countries. At the end of last year, the Norwegian government co-hosted the first expert meeting on fisheries crime, held in Cape Town. The report of this “fisheries crime symposium” described IUU fishing in Africa costs 1 billion a year, meaning “1 in 4 fish is stolen”. And it is highly organised groups that cause the most harmful forms of fisheries crime, often with links to other organised crime. Fisheries crime was described as:
Highly organised, well-financed transnational criminal activities…linked to a wider black-economy, a parallel economic system…frequently linked to complex webs of organised crime. Countries are being deprived of taxes, citizens of jobs, food and income, and fisheries and environments are being destroyed. In addition, certain networks within the fisheries sector associate with other crime such as drugs, trafficking, wildlife smuggling and fraud.
There are now demands for drastically strengthening law enforcement, for which more resources and development aid is needed. The required effort to defeat the criminals is increasingly depicted as a war, just as we have heard the need for launching a war against drugs, people smuggling or terrorism. Yet is the information being used to understand the extent, nature and impact of IUU fishing reliable and pertinent?
A recent study in the Pacific, published by MRAG, casts some doubt. It was not quite so alarming about the impact of IUU fishing, and it found no evidence of a conspiracy of criminal groups. The study estimated that IUU fishing for tuna, shark and billfish amounted to about $600 million a year. Almost all illegal fishing was caused by licensed vessels, and seemed quite widespread in the sector. And while the figure of $600 million seems a lot, the author’s of the report explain the economic implications of IUU for Pacific Island States are ambiguous.
Based on the most recent estimates of profitability in the WCPO purse seine and longline sectors, we estimate the rent associated with IUU is around $152.67m. Nevertheless, because of the nature of access arrangements in Pacific tuna fisheries, it is possible that much of the rent associated with IUU activity is captured anyway, and this estimate either overstates or is at least at the upper end of, actual impacts on the real economy.
Indeed, the report reveals that significant forms of IUU fishing, such as misreporting data on catches, cause no loss of income to the coastal state, and other forms of crime can contribute positively to government wealth. Certainly it would be a mistake to imagine eliminating IUU would simply result in increasing the potential wealth from fisheries by $600 million. But this error in thinking is evident in the way statistics are used to describe IUU in Africa. The implications for fisheries policy debates are important.
Hopefully, a new study being undertaken now by the African Union, with funding by the EU, can further our understanding of the problem. According to the terms of reference for the consultants, the study will produce a comprehensive document on the economic, social and environmental impacts of IUU on the continent. This is tremendously important as reliable information about the impacts of IUU are needed to support policy making and guide the allocation of scarce funds. However, the prospects of this new study to deepen our knowledge look slim. The consultants have chosen to gather information by using a basic questionnaire (with multiple answers) sent out to a random group of people working on fisheries. How they expect this data will be useful, other than confirming perceptions about crime, is difficult to know. One hopes the questionnaire is not given too much focus in their study, and the authors can provide us with a more reliable insight using other methods.
Why Africa does not lose 1 billion from IUU fishing
The most influential study on IUU fishing in Africa was commissioned by the UK government and also authored by MRAG. It was published in 2005 and claimed IUU was valued at $0.9 billion dollars (although nearly always rounded up to 1 billion when referenced by others). The method to arrive at this figure relied on estimates of illegal fishing in 8 countries (including one that was not even in Africa - Papua New Guinea). The data was provided by just one anonymous source in each country. There was no explanation of how these people would have such a reliable insight into rates of crime among vessels at sea, many of which are not visible from shore and are subject to minimal state monitoring.
This estimate of the scale of IUU fishing from the 8 countries was then extrapolated for all African coastal countries based on the finding that rates of illegal fishing in the 8 countries closely correlated with their scores on international good governance indexes. So a formula was created, using the World Bank’s governance scores, to predict the amount of IUU fishing in countries where MRAG didn’t commission case study work.
The strength of their data for the 8 country case studies was far too weak to form a reliable prediction on IUU in other countries. But also the theory for this relationship between a country’s score on good governance was not established in any detail. There may well be a relationship, but it will be complex, and an alternative hypothesis is that very weak states probably license too many vessels and they might provide lax license arrangements. States with weak governance may have less illegal fishing but more harmful legal fishing.
While we can ponder the relationships between governance and illegal fishing, a more serious problem is that the single scores produced by these governance indexes are not only criticised for being unreliable and meaningless, but much of the data used for these governance indexes derive from rank ordering countries. This makes the scores unsuitable to predict economic data, for the simple reason that a country that scores 2 on a governance index does not have governance that is twice as good as a country that scores 1. An anomaly of using this method was that 4 countries in Africa returned results that indicated they had no illegal fishing, Sao Tome and Principe, South Africa, Mauritius and Cape Verde.
The problem with the 2005 study was not just with its method of estimating the scale of IUU fishing. The study was extremely confusing when it came to understanding the costs. The authors regularly referred to the value of illegal fishing as a loss to African states, and ever since people have referred to the report as providing evidence that African states lose $1 billion a year from these crimes. As the authors explained:
The most obvious impact [of IUU] is direct loss of the value of the catches that could be taken by the coastal state if the IUU fishing was not taking place. Aside from the loss to GNP, actual revenue can accrue to the coastal state in the form of landings fees, licence fees, taxes and other levies which are payable by legal fishing operators. We have estimated…that at a minimum $0.9bn of IUU catch is taken from EEZs of various countries in the sub-Saharan Africa region, the majority of which are developing countries.
But the recent study from the Pacific describes well why measuring the value of fish obtained through illegal means and measuring the resulting economic costs for coastal states are two quite different things. In the case of the Pacific, the most valuable forms of crime were misreporting catches and fishing with prohibited methods (there was very little unlicensed fishing). These crimes can result in extra catches for the vessels, but because vessels do not pay per fish caught, reducing these offences would not increase government income.
So, reducing many forms of IUU fishing would not result in producing economic gains for the state (commensurate with the value of IUU fishing). For the most part it would mean lower profits for fishing companies, which in turn may lower the available rents for governments, assuming that fees charged by governments are influenced by what companies can afford to pay. In the short term, at least, reducing certain types of IUU fishing could have negative economic consequences for coastal states, as well as being a very costly endeavour.
To better understand the economic impacts of illegal fishing we must also appreciate that profits derived from illegal fishing are not simply being removed from the legal economy. Of course, some fish caught illegally may be exported to non-African consumer markets, thereby denying national companies and markets fish supplies, to the benefit of foreign companies and countries. But such tendencies have long been concern about the way the legal sector works, which makes distinguishing the relative costs of crime quite tricky. There are also numerous examples where illegally caught fish are processed and consumed in African markets. Illegal fishing in Africa does not simply involve stealing fish from the continent; it can also contribute to the productive sector, providing income, jobs and fish to eat. But this is rarely factored into the analysis of the costs of IUU fishing.
In South Africa, WWF published a study in 2014 on the value of illegal poaching of lobsters and abalone, which claimed the country was losing 4 million Rand a year. There are legitimate concerns about the ecological impact of this, but as the poachers are mostly South Africans from poor coastal communities, the economic impact of poaching is to add 4 million Rand to the economy every year, as well as provide income for many poor people. Illegal fishing, like many other economic crimes (such as the drugs trade), should be accounted for as part of a country’s GDP (or GNP), not discounted from it. Of course, some profits from illegal fishing may not end up being taxed (although some will be), and the lion’s share of the profits may be realised in foreign jurisdictions, or off-shore. But these problems also happen to profits derived from the legal sector as well.
Is 1 in 4 fish stolen?
Another influential finding from the 2005 study is that IUU fishing accounts for a surprising amount of the total fish caught in Africa. To estimate the scale of this, the study compared the figure of $0.9 billion to official catches reported to the FAO. This method revealed the value of IUU fishing equated to about 19% of the value of legal fish products. This may be why some fisheries experts claim 1 in 4 fish is stolen in Africa?
However, the 2005 study was valuing fish caught illegally among many industrial fishing fleets operating in Africa who don’t land their catches locally, so their catch data is reported as being from their flag state. FAO country data doesn’t reflect what is being caught in African waters. Indeed, for many African countries, given that industrial fisheries are not able or willing to land locally, data submitted to the FAO by coastal states comprises mostly estimates about the small-scale sector and inland fisheries, which are two sectors the MRAG study did not include in their research. Using official country data to contrast with their data on IUU has grossly distorted the picture about the scale of illegal fishing on the continent. We do not know if the outcome is to exaggerate or to underestimate. But certainly there is no robust data that shows 1 in 4 fish is stolen from Africa.
And the statement that 1 in 4 fish is stolen perpetuates a simplistic distinction between the impacts of legal and illegal fishing. The idea that a quarter of fish are stolen suggests all is OK with the other three quarters. We can return to the study of IUU fishing in the Pacific to see why this is problematic. Here the largest single source of illegal fishing by value was purse seine boats fishing with Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) during the 4 months of the year when these are banned. However the Deputy Director of the Forum Fisheries Agency, Wez Norris, explained why these bans can be ineffective.
During those months you have very little bigeye being caught but one of the responses of the industry has been to fish heavily on FADs in the other eight months of the year so that’s reduced the effectiveness of the measure.
So, following the logic of much writing on IUU we can see that the fish caught with FADs during the 8 months would be seen as contributing to the legitimate wealth of the Pacific Islands - forming part of the economic value of the ocean - but the fish caught with FADs during the 4 months would be considered stolen; a loss to the economy. It is muddled thinking, particularly if the level of fishing and by-catch during the 8 months is far more than is desirable for sustainable fishing.
How can the African Union’s study improve our thinking?
Although empirical claims on the economic costs of IUU fishing are unreliable, and in some ways we can see that they may exaggerate economic costs to African states, there are of course legitimate concerns about criminality in the sector. Perhaps most important of all is the potential for illegal fishing to lead to overfishing and undermine food security. We need to understand the extent of all these threats very carefully, bearing in mind that overfishing and unfair trade have been concerns about the nature of legal fishing in Africa for decades.
But clearly research on IUU that relies heavily on ‘perceptions’ is not sufficient. That the AU is using a questionnaire to update information on IUU is therefore worrying. The Pacific Island study represented a much more rigorous attempt to collate information, but even there the authors relied on best estimates from the fishing authorities to fill in the gaps. There were no investigations or in-depth case study work, including interviews with those best placed to know about crime – the fishers themselves (as well as their lawyers, agents and insurance companies).
This type of research, based on spending time speaking with people close to and involved in crime has been crucial to some of the most insightful studies on corporate or organised crime, and it regularly reveals how perceptions held by law enforcement agencies or the public about crime are often unreliable. No source of information is sufficient in isolation, yet we seem to rely almost exclusively on data about IUU fishing produced by those with a vested interest in fighting it: NGOs campaigning against IUU fishing, consultancy firms (such as MRAG) who provide services to governments to improve monitoring and compliance, and law enforcement agencies.
Getting a more balanced insight into the nature and impact of illegal fishing is very important. Flawed data will distort policy making – potentially convincing governments and donor agencies to put a great deal of time and resources into something that may not be the most important to prioritise (why is there not more interest in addressing corruption, for example?). For the time being, because of the flawed data, we have no idea on the real costs of fisheries crime in Africa. Perhaps it is far more widespread than existing studies suggest (including in the small-scale sector) meaning a law enforcement approach is hardly likely to work. But equally it may not be, and the obsession with IUU fishing may be shifting blame, ultimately dumbing down our understanding about overfishing and unfair fisheries arrangements. And with escalating calls for harsher treatment for the criminals, it seems important to think about the implications for workers and small-scale fishers.
Every other international war on crime tends to be an abject failure that causes a great deal of suffering for those who were never intended to be the target. A tough law enforcement approach may not be the best solution, particularly in countries that score poorly on the World Bank's governance indexes. But can the new study by the African Union consider this, or will it end up simply repeating the call for strengthening policing and punishments based on perceptions by fisheries crime experts?
