IUU fishing and other fish crimes /  by Francisco Blaha

For years I have been a bit reticent on the general criminalisation of fishers where IUU fishing is railed down as being de facto seen as involving crimes like drugs, arms trafficking.. which from my experience can happen, but that is not ALWAYS the case.

Stern talks are part of the life on board

This recent paper “Fish crimes in the global ocean” by Dyhia Belhabib (whom I have corresponded with and have tons of respect, she published this article we wrote with my friends) and Phillipe Le Billion (whom I don't know) proves my point above… the majority of IUU events happen as only IUU, with a minority involving other forms of crime

Is a big paper that needs substantial digestion, but is interesting for its ambition.

While I have issues with papers that look at global aspects (as it always implies compromises) I’m absolutely aware of my minimal academic credential (I only have 2 masters) so I would not dare comment on the methods. 

Coming from an operational background, in my experiences, the realities of tuna fishing are totally different between Purse Seiners and Longliners to  point of difficult comparison, furthermore different areas of the oceans are totally different in terms of the level of governance and MCS, and even in these specific areas the difference in between coastal states jurisdiction and high seas is vastly different, albeit being in many cases vessels flagged to the same DWFN

Yet I get two main points:

Our analysis reveals that the most common offense remains fishing without a license or permit, with 48% of all offenses, and other fishing offenses (31%) including gear, season- and zone-related, underreporting, and quota-related offenses, followed by human rights and labor abuse (11%); transshipment (3%); and smuggling of drugs, arms, and other goods and products (4%)

From a IUU fishing this tells me of all the offences they analysed (48% unlicensed  +31% gear seasons reporting, etc + 3% transhipments related) 82% are fisheries-related issues, 11% labour / human rights and only 4% are for smuggling drugs, arms, etc… 

Later the paper says

Of the 6853 incidents recorded, 6003 incidents (88%) involved fishing vessels caught for a single type of offense: 4954 for one illegal fishing, 140 for illegal transshipment; 66 for illegal diversion including noncompliance strategies, forgery, or the illegal use of flags;  

While I would add those categories under IUU fishing … in any case, the paper recognises that 11% (772 events) included at least two types of offences. And of those Illegal fishing is linked to other non–fishing-related offences in 57% (around 360?) of the cases with two or more offences.

While this may not be the aim of the paper, (around 360 out of over 6500 even if my calculations are wrong) I think is good news as it shows that the vast majority (80%+) of the vessel engaged in IUU do not partake in other crimes. 

From the perspective of someone that works against IUU (which is already hard) but has no legal capacity to tackle the other issues, it means to me that I can focus on IUU as that is most of the work and then expand into joint work with other authorities (always complicated) for the minority of cases.

Yet there is one part that I disagree with, based on my local experience, is under the title

Interactions with labor abuses and slavery at sea

Our analysis shows that these cases are notably reported for slavery aboard occurring in the territorial waters and EEZ of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, South Africa, and Thailand with over 291 cases globally where illegal fishing was linked to forced labor. All of these cases occurred on industrial vessels and by their crewing companies involving either companies or individual recruiters.

I don't know about the other countries… But Papua New Guinea has some of the strictest controls on its tuna fleet in the region and I have worked on their vessels… so unless this refers to the illegal inclusions of Indonesian vessels over the EEZ borders of the smaller scale fleet, I’m not sure where that reference came from

Anyway… other than my personal uneducated take on these issues, and areas one may or may not agree, the paper is a good read, since it makes you think! And in my small fisherman head, thinking is always a good thing.

Can e-dFADs be used as floating open-ocean sampling stations for tuna biomass? /  by Francisco Blaha

Been writing on the impact of eFADS in the tuna fishery for a new years now… I find them fascinating, and they have revolutionised the fishery, to a point where I think that if they were to disappear, a substantial amount (50%?) of the fleet would collapse… particularly as many of the “pre eFAD” skippers retire and their traditional knowledge goes with them. 

I see them as treat but an opportunity at the same time…  recently wrote about an paper analysing if drifting eFADs can be a good source of independent data for Stock Assessments…. So when new FADs papers come I’m keen… and particularly if they can contribute to stock assessment.

Ergo, one named “TUN-AI: Tuna biomass estimation with Machine Learning models trained on oceanography and echosounder FAD data” was in that alley.

I’m not going to pretend I understood the whole paper… as is dense in statistics and programming…. But the abstract, discussion and conclusion make sense in my little brain… so here they are. But as always: Read the original!

Abstract

The use of dFADs by tuna purse-seine fisheries is widespread across oceans, and the echo-sounder buoys attached to these dFADs provide fishermen with estimates of tuna biomass aggregated to them. This information has potential for gaining insight into tuna behaviour and abundance, but has traditionally been difficult to process and use. The current study combines FAD logbook data, oceanographic data and echo-sounder buoy data to evaluate different Machine Learning models and establish a pipeline, named TUN-AI, for processing echo-sounder buoy data and estimating tuna biomass (in metric tons, t) at various levels of complexity: binary classification, ternary classification and regression. Models were trained and tested on over 5000 sets and over 6000 deployments. Of all the models evaluated, the best performing one uses a 3-day window of echo-sounder data, oceanographic data and position/time derived features. This model is able to estimate if tuna biomass was higher than 10 t or lower than 10 t with an F1-score of 0.925. When directly estimating tuna biomass, the best model (Gradient Boosting) has an error (MAE) of 21.6 t and a relative error (SMAPE) of 29.5%, when evaluated over sets. All models tested improved when enriched with oceanographic and position-derived features, highlighting the importance of these features when using echo-sounder buoy data. Potential applications of this methodology, and future improvements, are discussed.

Discussion 

The purpose of this paper is to present a new pipeline for estimating tuna biomass aggregated at dFADs, named TUN-AI. The pipeline uses echo-sounder buoy, oceanographic and FAD logbook data to train multiple Machine Learning models that solve different tasks relevant to fisheries operations. To find the most accurate methodology, we tested the performance of classification and regression methods, as well as the relative impact of including different data sources on model performance. The approach used in the current study differs from previous work in several ways. Although the methodology in Baidai et al. (2020) is similar to ours, they only tackle the classification problem, and thus they are not able to directly estimate the metric tons of tuna under the dFAD. They also have a smaller sample size in terms of sets (albeit similar) that covers only the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Finally, we have also tested several models for each task in order to find the one with the best overall performance. Model performance of the two studies are hard to compare directly, since the models have been trained on different datasets. It is worth noting that other studies that address the regression problem, like Orue et al. (2019a); Lopez et al. (2016), cannot be directly compared with this study for a number of reasons: First, their sample size is orders of magnitude smaller (21 and 138 sets, respectively). Second, they only have data from a single ocean (Atlantic and Indian, respectively). Finally, they perform a statistical model fit, while our study involves a full ML approach with train-test split and a much larger dataset. This means that TUN-AI is expected to have the reported performance on new, unseen data, while there is no guarantee that the models in Orue et al. (2019a) and Lopez et al. (2016) will generalize as well, as they use the same dataset for model fit and error evaluation. In addition, the assumptions and data-processing methods applied in other work may not be directly comparable to the process described here. For example, Orue et al. (2019a); Lopez et al. (2016) assume that tunas only occupy layers deeper than 25 m, thus omitting biomass estimates from shallower layers in their analyses. In our case, all layers were considered, as skipjack tuna are known to prefer warmer surface waters in areas where the thermocline is shallow (Andrade, 2003). In fact, later studies using the same approach as Lopez et al. (2016) did not achieve significant improvements on biomass estimates (Orue et al., 2019b). When developing tuna presence/absence and classification models, Baidai et al. (2020) also chose to consider all layers in their analyses, which used data from a different brand of echo-sounder buoys in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, but did not consider oceanographic parameters in their models. 

Our analysis also evaluated the impact of oceanographic conditions and position-derived variables on model performance. Across all tasks and models, the inclusion of additional features clearly improved when compared to the model that only used echo-sounder data. This highlights the importance of enriching biomass estimates with contextual information when using data from echo-sounder buoys attached to dFADs. Although at first glance this would prove laborious, the current pipe-line draws from automated processes for extracting the oceanographic data and relating it to the other available datasets, thus the added complexity translated to only a few minutes of additional computation time on standard equipment. Given the improvement in model accuracy when including this information, and the potential applications of having accurate methods for estimating tuna biomass at dFADs, we consider that it is worthwhile to use all available information. 

Previous studies have investigated the relationship between tropical tuna distribution and oceanographic conditions, both through catch data from observer logbooks and from dFAD data. For instance, in the Atlantic and Indian oceans skipjack tuna has been known to aggregate around upwelling systems and productive features where feeding habitat is favorable, and variables such as sea surface temperature or SSH have been shown to have a significant relation with tuna distribution (Druon et al., 2017; Lopez, 2017). In addition, Spanish fishers using echo-sounder buoys on dFADs consider that the oceanographic context of the dFAD, and the characteristics of each ocean influence the accuracy of biomass estimates provided by buoys (Lopez and Scott, 2014). It is worth noting that the oceanographic variables included in the current study were at surface level only (except for thermocline depth and SSHa). However, given the fact that tuna distribution within the water column is largely temperature dependent (Aoki et al., 2020; Hino et al., 2019; Tanabe et al., 2017) it is likely that models would further improve when considering variables depth-wise. 

Models could be also enriched by considering dFAD soak time, which has been relevant in previous research, or presence/absence of bycatch species and other species of tuna (Orue et al., 2019b; Lopez, 2017; Forget et al., 2015). Indeed, the presence of small schooling bycatch species such as oceanic triggerfish (Canthidermis maculata), which has been found at dFADs (Forget et al., 2015), could be affecting the biomass estimates provided by the echo-sounder buoys. We see some evidence of this when examining the accuracy of our models in the binary classification task (see Table 7): the model performed worse when being tested on sets. This is likely due to cases where species other than tuna were contributing to the echo-sounder signal, so the buoy’s biomass estimates were high even though real catch of tuna at the dFAD was low. This was reflected particularly in the Atlantic Ocean, where accuracy was lowest and bycatch is higher than in other oceans (Restrepo et al., 2017). Future studies could include the bycatch information recorded in the FAD logbooks to account for this effect. Looking more closely into the binary classification model, we can see that the worst performance comes from trying to distinguish sets that catch less than 10 t from the rest. This makes sense, since the fact that a fishing vessel decided to set on a specific FAD is probably already a good indicator of the echo-sounder measurements showing a strong signal, which probably correspond to other fish species. 

These are clearly the hardest observations to distinguish. In the current study, species composition of the catch data was not considered. As the echo-sounder buoys used in this study calculate biomass estimates based on the target strength of skipjack tuna, it is likely that the presence of other tuna species such as bigeye, which has a lower target strength (Boyra et al., 2018, 2019) and thus stronger acoustic response, would impact biomass estimates from the echo-sounder buoys, contributing to errors within the models used to estimate aggregation size.

Most traditional echo-sounder buoys do not currently differentiate between species when giving biomass estimates, though recent buoy models, such as the ISD+buoys included in the study, provide a daily estimate of species composition together with biomass estimates. Although previous studies have highlighted the importance of considering species composition when estimating biomass (Moreno et al., 2019; Santiago et al., 2016), the information from these buoys has not yet been applied, and should be considered in future studies. Likewise, this study only used echo-sounder information from one buoy manufacturer, although vessels may use buoys from up to four different brands. 

The echo-sounders and buoys from each manufacturer vary on a number of levels: beam angle, sampling method, echo-sounder frequency, etc.; so the same machine learning models used here cannot be applied directly. Nonetheless, future studies could explore the application of similar ML models to the biomass estimates provided by other buoy brands in order to establish manufacturer-specific echo-sounder signal processing pipelines. In the case of classification models, the confusion matrices in Fig. 4 showed that most cases where the model misclassified the tuna aggregation size were when biomass estimates were medium (10 t ≤ y < 30 t) or high (y ≥ _30 t). On the other hand, when examining the regression models we found that estimated tuna biomass tended to be lower than observed tuna biomass as the latter increased (Fig. 6). This could be due to various factors: firstly, catches over 100 t were relatively rare (in our data, 315 events, 8.1%) and thus the model did not have sufficient examples to properly learn from them; secondly, buoys are only able to estimate the biomass of tuna within the echo-sounder beam, and in tuna aggregations over 100 t it is unlikely that the entire school is under the buoy at the same time. Furthermore, it is possible that with large schools of tuna the echo-sounder signal saturates, and the biomass estimates provided by the echo-sounder buoy become an underestimation. To resolve this issue, it could be interesting to apply specialist models which could be adjusted according to when aggregations are predicted to be small or large. It is also worth noting that fishermen do not choose on which buoys they set at random, but based on the biomass estimation provided to them, and thus could be biased towards buoys with higher biomass estimations. This could be a further reason why our ML models underestimated the observed tuna biomass when its values were above 30 t in the case of the ternary classification, or 100 t in the case of the regression tasks. Future studies exploring the reasons behind fishermen’s decisions to visit a buoy could provide further insight into this point. This tendency to underestimate should also be taken into account when using information derived from echo-sounder buoys for stock assessments (Santiago et al., 2016), although consistent underestimation should have no effect on patterns present in the temporal series. 

The pelagic and migratory nature of tuna make it a challenging species to study using traditional methods, as only a small part of this species’ habitat can be observed in real time at any given moment. However, dFADs equipped with high-tech echo-sounder buoys, as those used in the current study, can be used as floating open-ocean sampling stations, gathering constant and current information from various sensors. 

As shown here, and as remarked by other authors (Orue et al., 2019a), although the information provided by the echo-sounder alone is valuable, it still requires extensive cleaning and filtering prior to use. These initial protocols can avoid errors due to measurements taken by the buoys on board or on land, but the ML techniques used here go a step further in processing the echo-sounder signal to correctly estimate tuna biomass beneath any given echo-sounder buoy. This way, the echo-sounder signals can provide insight into the whereabouts and behaviour of tuna around dFADs, at a fraction of the cost of what scientific expeditions with the same scope could achieve. As highlighted by previous authors, this type of data could be used for fishery-independent abundance indices, improving knowledge on species distribution or better understanding the factors driving aggregation and disaggregation processes of tuna at dFADs (Santiago et al., 2016; Lopez et al., 2016; Moreno et al., 2019). 

The current study represents an important step in this direction, being the first to successfully evaluate the performance of numerous ML models, following correct ML methodology using large amounts of data to both train and test each model. This has allowed Tun-AI to tackle the most tasks of various complexities, including directly estimating the amount of tuna aggregated to the dFAD, achieving high degrees of accuracy. As evidenced here, when the massive data provided by echo-sounder buoys attached to dFADs is further enriched with remote-sensing data on conditions across oceans, and trained with reliable ground-truthed data, ML proves a powerful tool for extracting otherwise hidden patterns in these datasets, potentially furthering knowledge on pelagic species.

Latest crop of papers that I barely got time to read! /  by Francisco Blaha

Normally when i like a paper a do a deep dive, take some notes and write here about it. Yet the last month has been quite busy as i’m doing a lot of reading of papers for meetings, finishes an estimation of containerisation for FFA, review a IUU NPOA that was done under format i designed, did some work on transhipment observers, work on a carrier inspection training manual, and my ocean acidification course, and my training for swimming 20 km next week for charity, made for a rather exhausting schedule so my blogging rate has been low.

I had a go to the following papers that I enjoy even if was only a “light” read. As a non specialist (and a non academic) I have the luxury to have various interests in what are very different areas of fisheries… yet after almost 40 years in I fisheries, I see it has a very dynamic model where everything has an influence at some stage… either direct of indirectly.

Timing and magnitude of climate-driven range shifts in transboundary fish stocks challenge their management

This is something big for us here in the pacific, so i like to keep up to the game. I know two of the authors (Colette C. C. Wabnitz, and Rashid Sumaila) but also one of the reviewers: numbers maverick and fellow dubber Alex Tidd. The abstract is self explanatory:

Climate change is shifting the distribution of shared fish stocks between neighboring countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and the high seas. The timescale of these transboundary shifts determines how climate change will affect international fisheries governance. Here, we explore this timescale by coupling a large ensemble simulation of an Earth system model under a high emission climate change scenario to a dynamic population model. We show that by 2030, 23% of transboundary stocks will have shifted and 78% of the world's EEZs will have experienced at least one shifting stock. By the end of this century, projections show a total of 45% of stocks shifting globally and 81% of EEZs waters with at least one shifting stock. The magnitude of such shifts is reflected in changes in catch proportion between EEZs sharing a transboundary stock. By 2030, global EEZs are projected to experience an average change of 59% in catch proportion of transboundary stocks. Many countries that are highly dependent on fisheries for livelihood and food security emerge as hotspots for transboundary shifts. These hotspots are characterized by early shifts in the distribution of an important number of transboundary stocks. Existing international fisheries agreements need to be assessed for their capacity to address the social–ecological implications of climate-change-driven transboundary shifts. Some of these agreements will need to be adjusted to limit potential conflict between the parties of interest. Meanwhile, new agreements will need to be anticipatory and consider these concerns and their associated uncertainties to be resilient to global change.

China’s seafood imports—Not for domestic consumption?

Already 20 years ago we were catching Hoki, doing gill and gutting, freezing on board, unloading to containers and sending to China for processing and exporting. A few years later the company actually establish a joint venture there with a local processor and sold under its own brand… New Zealand caught fish to US and EU consumers… you had to look on the fine point to see was processed in China.. all above board in terms of labelling and compliance (to make happen was my job at the time).

So obviously i was interested to see what what the present situation… and i have to admit it blew me away…. China is the biggest fishing nation in the works on all metrics… yet this paper estimates that we estimate that almost 75% % of imports to China are processed and reexported.

Here is the abstract: Global trade in seafood is tightly coupled with environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Yet, two features of global seafood trade hamper efforts to promote sustainability. First, the recent practice of importing seafood, processing it, and then exporting it (“reexporting”) at a large scale complicates tracing seafood from the water to the plate and enables mislabeling. Second, reexports can exacerbate problems stemming from distant-water fishing (DWF), i.e., fish caught in international waters and other countries’ economic zones. DWF obscures the distinction between domestic and imported seafood and is implicated in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and other unsustainable practices (5). Both features highlight the critical role of China, the world’s largest DWF nation and largest seafood producer, consumer, exporter, and importer (by volume). Contradicting the narrative that Chinese domestic demand is driving imports, we estimate that 74.9% of imports to China are processed and reexported.

Links between behaviour and metabolic physiology in fishes in the Anthropocene

This is interesting one as it tackles the issue of recreational fishing to and extent. As non motorised spear-fisherman, I see the massive impact that recreational fisheries have in developed countries particular close to urban areas, as in my home, Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf of NZ.

The paper is wide but im very interested in the following concept: “While, it appears that all types of capture fisheries are likely to reduce the adaptive potential of fished populations to climate stressors, angling, which is primarily associated with recreational fishing, may induce the separation of natural populations by removing individuals with bold behavioural traits and potentially the physiological traits required to facilitate behavioural change.”

In the graph you see here, that suggest/concludes that recreational fishing and climate change select for lowered adaptive potential… and that is not good news… as we never had so much of both like now.

Here is the abstract:
Changes in behaviour and physiology are the primary responses of fishes to anthropogenic impacts such as climate change and over-fishing. Behavioural changes (such as a shift in distribution or changes in phenology) can ensure that a species remains in an environment suited for its optimal physiological performance. However, if fishes are unable to shift their distribution, they are reliant on physiological acclimatization (either by broadening their metabolic curves to tolerate a range of stressors, or by shifting their metabolic curves to maximize their performance at extreme stressors). However, since there are links between fish physiology and behaviour, changes to either of these trait groups may have reciprocal interactions.

This paper reviews the current knowledge of the links between the behaviour and aerobic metabolic physiology of fishes, discusses these in the context of exploitation and climate change and makes recommendations for future research needs. The review revealed that our understanding of the links between fish behaviour and metabolic physiology is rudimentary. However, both are hypothesized to be linked to stress responses along the hypothalamic pituitary axis. The link between metabolic physiological capacity and behaviour is particularly important as both determine the response of an individual to a changing climate and are under selection by fisheries. While, it appears that all types of capture fisheries are likely to reduce the adaptive potential of fished populations to climate stressors, angling, which is primarily associated with recreational fishing, may induce the separation of natural populations by removing individuals with bold behavioural traits and potentially the physiological traits required to facilitate behavioural change. Future research should focus on assessing how the links between metabolic physiological capacity and behaviour influence catchability, the response to climate change drivers and post-release recovery. The plasticity of phenotypic traits should be examined under a range of stressors of differing intensity, in several species and life history stages. Future studies should also assess plasticity (fission or fusion) in the phenotypic structuring of social hierarchy and how this influences habitat selection. Ultimately, to fully understand how physiology is influenced by the selective processes driven by fisheries, long-term monitoring of the physiological and behavioural structure of fished populations, their fitness and catch rates are required. This will provide information that can be used by managers to retain behavioural and physiological trait diversity, which will be necessary to improve the resilience of fished populations to the impacts of climate change and safeguard the provision of resources for future generations.

WMU Capacity-Building Project to Progress the Implementation of International Instruments to Combat IUU Fishing /  by Francisco Blaha

Among many of the interesting and “unusual” jobs, I did last year, was to be a presenter at the 1st Capacity-Building Project to Progress the Implementation of International Instruments to Combat IUU Fishing (CAPFISH), organised by the World Maritime University. Next week I’ll be involved in the 2nd one.

My involvement came via an invitation from Francis Neat Professor, Sustainable Fisheries Management, Ocean Biodiversity and Marine Spatial Planning there and the Nippon Foundation Chair, whom I’m extremely thankful for the opportunity

It was an amazing experience to share the presenter role with very well known and qualified academics and officers of international organizations like UBC’s U. Rashid Sumaila, ILO Brandt Wagner, EU’s IUU policy Roberto Cesari, my former colleagues from FAO Matthew Camilleri, Alicia Mosteiro and Ari Gudmundsson and Jung-re Riley Kim,  she is one of the people I have learned to admire the most over the last years of WCPFC meetings since she the chair of all the main meetings (she is a Policy Officer of Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries). Her impeccable style and professionalism have impressed me so much during the facilitation and management of the meetings… honestly, I was just stoked to be next to her in the programme! Particularly since I’m the only one of the 27 scholars presenting that is not affiliated with an institution

I always was interested in the WMU, in fact, is the kind of place I would love to have the opportunity to study… their PhD in Maritime Affairs is one that I have been aiming for years… but as self-employed is impossible since I need to work to live and the costs of studying there, while accessible are not cheap.  Yet if you have the opportunity to get a scholarship via your employer I totally recommend you give it a go, the faculty is impressive!

Anyway, the report of the1st workshop was very complimentary of my presentation and I quote it below… I really really looking forwards to the next one next week!

Mr. Blaha delivered an engaging presentation on IUU fishing in the Western Central Pacific Ocean Tuna Fishery, with many practical lessons centred around regional cooperation for developing countries. He began by noting that, while the states in this region are often seen as Small Island Developing States, they are in reality large ocean nations. They are also members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA). 

The region is vast and boasts one of the largest fisheries in the world. Fisheries are absolutely key in this area, with the majority of government revenue in many states coming from fishing, and communities relying on fisheries for jobs, livelihoods and food security. Fisheries management is consequently taken very seriously and none of the major tuna stocks in the region are considered to be overfished or subject to overfishing. 

Every five years FFA conducts a study quantifying IUU fishing in the region. The 2016 study confirmed that the key threat to the region was from unreported fishing from licensed vessels, rather than illegal fishing. However, the 2021 update demonstrated a 50% reduction in the level of unreported catch, mainly thanks to better coordination and monitoring efforts by countries in the region. The FFA members have pooled their efforts and resources to create a unique set of monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) tools, particularly those focused on tracking vessels in local waters. Together with larger states with interests in the region, such as Australia, New Zealand, the USA and France, they undertake joint surveillance operations over the entirety of the Western and Central Pacific. Other important initiatives include observer programmes, use and development of electronic reporting and monitoring mechanisms, and the development and consistent application of the Harmonized Minimum Terms and Conditions for Access by Fishing Vessels. In 2020, the Harmonized Terms also incorporated the labour standards of the Work in Fishing Convention, requiring vessels to comply with these standards before being issued fishing licenses. 

Nevertheless, challenges remain in managing such a large fishery. These include data management, difficulties in monitoring high seas transshipments, the need to keep up with increasing efficiency of fishing operations, under-resourcing of fisheries administrations, climate change, subsidies, and geopolitical issues which arise when dealing with distant water fishing fleets. 

Mr. Blaha also suggested that there is a need to attract more diversity and new ways of thinking when dealing with the complex issue of fisheries management.

Understanding and implementing CDS – A guide for national authorities /  by Francisco Blaha

I was neck-deep into the Catch Documentation Scheme (CDS) world until 4 years ago, when I took a step back as here in the Pacific it was getting into the institutional positioning side of issues and they were walking away from a “centralised” repository of transactions (which for me is a key element for it to work, and I have written about) so I decided to move aside, do not compromise my beliefs, respond if asked, do technical support and focus on good PSM (which for me is another a prerequisite for a CDS to work)… in this area, the work we have done with the Marshall Islands has been a highlight of my career.

Everything starts here

I did a couple of FAO assignments on side topics (blockchain use) and in 2020 worked on the huge identification of “Critical Tracking Events (CTEs) and Key Data Elements (KDEs) along with the wild capture and aquaculture value chains” that are still being workshopped and discussed at FAO level.

So yeah… after 12 years of experience with the EU Catch Certification Scheme, my involvement in the FAO CDS guidelines, books written about it, advisor roles for institutions… and so on, still atopic i’m really keen to moving forwards, so I keep my eyes close to the game but not really playing it, while everyone just talks and argues… I like more operational jobs.

And generally, my criticism of many initiatives in the last years  is that they are “theoretical’ or just reinvent the wheel, by repeating how good it would be to have CDS… in fact, to have a CDS is one of the recommendations of the IUU quantification study we published this year 

For me, the reason why we don't have a multilateral, interconnected CDS system that would work as the accountancy systems for fisheries, is political decision one and not a technological one… we could borrow from banking and customs and come up with something that will work, surely will take time and mistakes, but it will work.

So when a while ago my friend and college Shelley Clarke chatted to me about a new FAO assignment she had on CDS booklet “Understanding and implementing catch documentation schemes – A guide for national authorities” I knew it would fill a niche that was needed.

Shelley is amazing, she knows her stuff and is a gifted writer (I wish I was 25% as good as she is, so my professional life would be much easier!) hence it does not come as a surprise that this publication is excellent and recommendable if you have an interest in all CDS things! 

Her document seeks to align and improve existing national monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) tools, as well as product tracking systems, in order to support more effective national CDS implementation and strengthen CDS throughout the international supply chain. 

The document contains chapters on the legal and policy background to CDS, an introduction to the features and requirements of existing schemes, as well as guidance on how to handle CDS information requirements and identify national key data elements. Finally, it provides a series of exercises for assessing relevant national capabilities and coordination processes, including the management and exchange of information.

I fully agree with the approaches and solutions she presents and the analysis of shortcomings of the present systems, and the need to be proactive.  

Her work parallels and cements a lot of my views, that I wish I was able to articulate as clearly as she does! (and I also really appreciate the various mention of my work with Gilles Hosch and Ken Katafono in the references and the fact that her work strengthen my position on PSM and a central repository of transactions)

I recommend you download and read the original, I just quote the conclusion here:

Catch documentation schemes cannot single-handedly stamp out IUU fishing. They rely on other monitoring, control and surveillance systems to generate information about the legal provenance of catches, and depend on product-level tracking systems to prevent the mixing of illegal and legal catch throughout the supply chain. In providing a framework for the compilation and sharing of legal provenance data, CDS represent an opportunity for cooperation and collaboration between different States along the seafood supply chain. Strengthening each State’s contribution to that framework therefore strengthens the system as a whole.

In their day-to-day participation in CDS, States face an array of choices which balance risk, cost and other factors. They must determine how and when data are collected and provided; what quality assurance underlies the data; and how such data are stored in order to respond to queries. 

States may aim to: meet the minimum standards of the CDS in which they are currently participating, uphold a higher standard required by the more advanced of the existing CDS (in the event that their fisheries or markets expand), or go beyond all of the existing CDS to anticipate future standards. Those that are proactive can protect the value of certified catch for their stakeholders, and avoid the broad-scale reputational damage of being associated with IUU fishing activities.

 This analysis has presented several ways that national authorities can assess their tools and systems against CDS requirements in order to identify issues and formulate actions to address them. These include identifying national catch tracking KDEs, evaluating national fish product tracking systems, assessing verification tools and systems, and weighing the benefits and costs of expanding CDS coverage. States which undertake these kinds of exercises not only stand to improve their own national systems, but will also set higher benchmarks for the ongoing evolution and expansion of CDS. Continuing improvement in the documentation of legal provenance, both CDS and its implementation at the national level, will serve as a potent deterrent to persistent IUU fishing activities.

what motivates fishers to share catch information? /  by Francisco Blaha

Any paper that has in the abstract this paragraph: 

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to designing and implementing information sharing schemes in fisheries, this paper highlights how industry and stakeholder support is often important, and understanding the needs, concerns, and motivations of any group of fishers is fundamental in developing and expanding such approaches. 

Does immediately call my attention…

@franciscoblaha - Mozambique

As ex-industry I have always been interested in industry involvement in research and compliance… which is to be driven by incentives.

The whole idea that people should do things because they have been told to do so, does never sits well with most people and even less with quite independent (and authority resistant) people like fishers… yet convince me that what is done has a benefit in terms of making me more money or saving me money… and I change in seconds.

For example, if my fishing access costs (licences, permits, VDS, etc) were prorated to my level of compliance, i.e. the more compliant I am are the less I pay… then I have a direct incentive to comply.

For example here in the Pacific FFA maintains a vessel compliance index (from 0: good to -5: terrible) calculated and assigned to a Vessel based on how compliant a Vessel is over a period of time. So if you were to give good vessels a 20% discount for example and bad vessels a 50% increase… I guarantee in 2-3 years they are all in -1 to -2.  Or with EM… if you have EM on board, we allow you use of the footage so you talk to the insurance companies for a lowering of premiums based on footage sharing when needed… for example.

Anyway… you get my drift.

The paper is called “An evaluation of information sharing schemes to identify what motivates fishers to share catch information”. The paper compiles information from 15 case study examples of existing information-sharing schemes in fisheries throughout the world. They compare the structure and operation of each of these schemes and determine what motivated participants to join and share potentially sensitive catch information. 

 I really liked this paper! As someone that has worked in fisheries in around 50 countries… I see it as almost a study that could have gone into the areas of anthropology and cultural understanding of authority and relationship to peers

As always read the original! (And big thank you to the lead author, Julia Calderwood for sending me a copy) 

Below I just quote the conclusions

From all of the examples in this paper, it is clear that there is no one size fits all solution for designing and incentivizing participation in catch sharing and bycatch avoidance schemes. There certainly may be more success in at least achieving longevity in information sharing schemes where data collection on bycatch is mandatory within a fishery, as in the US examples, rather than voluntary, as in many European fisheries. Trust between participants and willingness to join in schemes may also be more likely when there are already established relationships of fishers working together, through a co-operative for example. Additional incentives may be required to encourage data collection and information sharing, especially where data collection is voluntary. Yet there were examples of the use of additional incentives across both schemes with mandatory and voluntary data collection, and an additional reward may be required to increase bycatch avoidance behaviours regardless. It is clear that these incentives and rewards need to be sufficient to outweigh the time and burden of providing information and of avoiding unwanted catches. There is also evidence across a number of the schemes that it is important to ensure sharing of information does not reduce an individual’s competitive edge in a fishery. The importance of anonymity was evident across a majority of the case studies. Assurances that information sharing will not result in harsher restrictions or individual penalties may also be important for some.

All of these factors need to be considered when designing and implementing any form of information sharing scheme in fisheries, as industry buy-in is essential (O’Keefe and DeCelles, 2013). Despite this seeming like an almost impossible balancing act, many of the examples in this paper demonstrate that it is possible to design schemes which have industry support. It is clear, however, that it is important to avoid making assumptions about what will motivate fishers to participate in information sharing schemes. This highlights a need for more research to be focused on better understanding these motivations, which could be achieved through directly asking and interviewing those who have shared catch information to reflect on their experiences. Taking a collaborative approach, when designing and implementing such schemes, is also vital to fully understand the needs, concerns, and motivations of any group of fishers, which is certainly fundamental in adopting and expanding such approaches.

 

My year of writing on plastics, inspection guides, IUU, labour, WCPFC meetings, transhipment, containerisation, longliners and so on /  by Francisco Blaha

As 2021 fades, and I’m exhausted, I look back to a year like no other in my working life. I’ve been operational for most of my life… the desk and my laptop is normally the place where I prepare for an upcoming mission, and where I report on it after its done.

My job was to be out in the water while training people either there or in a classroom for a bit, an exemption to that was doing intelligence analysis of incoming vessels, where I’ll spend time (with others) analysing VMS / AIS tracks, going through licensing databases, looking for ER inconsistencies, and so on… and thinking and ground-truthing on Catch Documentation Schemes… these are the kind stuff I’ll normally do when Go places and what people have paid me to do for the last 2 decades. 

my fisheries “reality” for the last 20 months

When in March of 2019 I took the last plane out of Kiritimati Islands… I thought oh well we bunker down for a few months, tighten my belt and wait for the storm to pass… but as things moved on… I was worried about what will I do without travelling… as a dyslexic non-native English speaker the policy and research world are not an easy fit for my lack of writing skills.

Yet somehow thanks to the support (and patience) of my main clients (NZ MFAT, FFA, PEW, TMT, OM, XERRA, Stanford University) other options opened and I found myself setting up research teams and advising organizations and various aspects… and yes… A LOT of writing, and it show… I have never published so much work in my life and in so many different topics where my experience somehow helped.

The main ones I remember the most

Yet also some interesting stuff was written about me, which never cease of surprising me

  • I have collaborated a lot with INFOFISH over the years. So when they asked me for an interview for the magazine industry profiles section, I knew that is was a sincere offer and they were after my personal and independent views since normally they get more corporate-oriented people, that have an agenda or try to sell something… and I’m very aware what a privilege it is to be an independent advisor

  • And one that was totally unexpected and really moved me was this one, New Zealand Geographic Magazine. A fisherman’s Journey, as I have been a follower of that magazine for many years now.

Finally also it was also the 1st time i got to do all the WCPFC meetings as a member of the RMI delegation, from the 3 inter-seasonal working groups I’m involved (transhipment, tropical tuna measure and labour standards) as well as the scientific and technical and compliance committees to finally the plenary. Albeit having being part of this fishery since 1991 starting as fisherman... I never been so close to the inside action of these meetings. It has been an eyeopening experience and I learned a lot of the incredible mixture of deep fisheries knowledge, psychology, chess and Shakespearian command of english that one needs tp work at this level. My greatest lesson in multitasking and attention to detail ever.

So yeah.. an interesting year… productive in a sense that I never really experienced before with most publications ever, yet at the same time (albeit being home) I have not felt so alone since adolescence (disclaimer: it wasn't a good one). My professional and personal life are very intertwined, almost two years at home in a developed country like NZ and the exposure to the whole anti-vaccine, the “personal freedom” debate, the push for private certifications (ecolabels and labour ones), the NGO’s MPAs drive, and so on… has confronted me again and again with the incredible level of entitlement and to an extent neo-colonialism of most western societies… and made me miss a lot my working friends in the Islands, Asia and Latin America

Let see what next year looks like…

In any case a HUGE thanks to the 28000 of you that read 45000 of my blogs… and after over 7 years… my mind explodes when a look at the stats of over 200000 visits and 165000 visitors.

Thank you all

Quantification of IUU Fishing in the Pacific Islands Region - 2020 Update /  by Francisco Blaha

There are jobs that I take a lot of pride in being part of, and this is one of them.. They are groundbreaking, and as such take a long time, have a lot of moving parts, and require lots of brainpower, lots of assumptions and therefore lots of ground-truthing on the assumptions made. And this last bit was my job as part of the team set up by Duncan Souter at MRAG Australia on a study that lasted over a year ago… and is one of those jobs that is unique to our region and as said I’m ultra-proud to have modestly contributed to it.

Summary of changes in ‘best estimate’ IIUU volume between the 2016 and 2020 studies.

I had an embargo to talk about it since we finished in late October, and I been sitting on this post since then!

So here it is: FFA’s Quantification of IUU Fishing in the Pacific Islands Region - a 2020 Update

Nowhere else, in any ocean basin, there is a body like FFA nor the strength of collaboration among coastal states and regional bodies. While other oceans talk (and mostly blame others) on IUU fishing, at FFA we are measuring it, in fact, we used 2015 one to guide our MCS efforts and to adjust our data granularity and collection points to have better and more accurate data for this one.

The estimates went down around 50% across the range of areas revised. Not to say that is all good and perfect… but gosh we need good news!!! For the last few weeks I have been part of a few panels and conferences on IUU in fisheries… and all I hear is the well-trialled litany of doom but very little by way of practical suggestions.

The assumption that unlicensed fishing is rampant, has been proven false again, the study reaffirm that misreporting of catch and harvest of tuna contributed an estimated 89% of the volume of IUU fishing. Only 5% of the total IUU volume was estimated to be due to various forms of unlicensed fishing. The rest was due to non-compliance with license conditions and post-harvest offences, yet the estimated volumes of these offences dropped from 306,440 tonnes in the 2015 estimate, to 192,186 tonnes presently.

The study highlights areas, that I have been working (and writing) a lot over the years, particularly that while the purse seine fishery is subject to strong MCS arrangements, including 100% observer coverage and a requirement to tranship catch in port, equivalent measures are not in place for the longline fishery. A higher proportion of longline fishing occurs on the high seas, where vessels can tranship catch, often with very limited monitoring in place.

The following strategies for validating the volume and species of tuna in longline fisheries are recommended:

I recommend you read the report… or for a lighted version check this little video animation in the meantime, I quote the executive summary.

BACKGROUND AND APPROACH

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a recognised global problem that undermines the integrity of responsible fisheries management arrangements and results in lost value to coastal states (e.g. FAO, 2002; Agnew et al, 2009). The first attempt at quantifying the value and volume of IUU fishing in tuna fisheries within the Pacific Islands region was undertaken in 2016 using data from 2010-2015 (MRAG Asia Pacific, 2016). That study estimated the total volume of the product either harvested or transhipped involving IUU activity in Pacific tuna fisheries was 306,440t, with an ex-vessel value of $616.11m. Nevertheless, the authors noted that the data and information underlying many of the estimates were highly uncertain and that the outputs should be seen as a ‘first cut’.

In order to assess changes in the nature and extent of IUU fishing since that time, this study was commissioned as part of the Global Environment Facility-funded Pacific Islands Oceanic Fisheries Management Project II (OFMP II) to undertake a ‘2020 update’ of the original estimates. Broadly, the aim was to undertake an

‘apples vs apples’ update of the original estimates, using a consistent methodology and taking into account the latest available information. The study period covered the years 2017-2019. Importantly, this preceded any COVID-19 related impacts on monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) and IUU activity in the region.

Broadly, we used a ‘bottom up’ approach to quantify IUU fishing activity across key IUU risks in four categories: (i) unlicensed/unauthorised fishing, (ii) misreporting, (iii) non-compliance with other license conditions (e.g. shark finning) and (iv) post- harvest risks (e.g. illegal transhipping).

‘Best estimate’ and minimum/maximum range values were generated for each risk, taking into account the best available information. Monte Carlo simulation was then used to produce probabilistic estimates of IUU activity, taking into account probability distributions assigned within the minimum and maximum range values. Using this approach, estimates of IUU volume and value were developed for each of the three main fishing sectors - purse seine (PS), tropical longline (TLL) and southern longline (SLL) – and then aggregated to produce an overall estimate for Pacific Islands region tuna fisheries.

While the same basic approach to estimating IUU was used between the 2016 and 2020 studies, a number of changes were made to the information underlying estimation of individual risks. In some cases, this was driven by new information becoming available (e.g. to estimate the scope for illegal transhipment), while in other cases the information previously used to support estimates for the 2016 study was no longer available. For some risks, these changes of information had substantial impacts on the estimated volume and value between studies.

ESTIMATED VOLUME AND VALUE OF IUU FISHING

Our simulations suggest the best estimate total annual volume of product either harvested or transhipped involving IUU activity in Pacific tuna fisheries during the 2017-19 period was 192,186t, with 90% confidence that the actual figure lies within a range of 183,809t to 200,884t. Based on the expected species composition and markets, the ex-vessel value of the best estimate figure is $333.49m. The 90% confidence range is between $312.24m and $358.17m. For context, the estimated IUU volume figure is around 6.5% of the total WCPFC Convention Area (WCPFC-CA) catch in 2019.

This result is a considerable reduction from the ‘first cut’ estimates in the 2016 study of 306,440t (276,546t to 338,475t) with a best estimate value of $616.11m ($517.91m to $740.17m). The reduction was primarily driven by substantial reductions in estimates for illegal transhipping and FAD fishing during the closure period (in turn driven by the use of better and different information, respectively) as well as the removal of the ‘unauthorised landings in foreign ports’ risk. Overall figures were also influenced by changes in fishery dynamics (e.g. catch, effort, price).

Amongst the four categories of risk identified here, the largest contribution to the overall IUU volume was made by misreporting, accounting for 89% of the total volume. Importantly, much of this volume was driven by misreporting and misidentifying target species in the purse seine sector for which challenges exist in making accurate estimates of catch at sea. The various types of unlicensed fishing collectively accounted for 5% of the overall estimated IUU volume, while non-compliance with license conditions and post-harvest offences accounted for 3% each.

Of the three main sectors assessed, the estimated volume of IUU products was highest in the purse seine sector, accounting for 72% of the overall volume. Nevertheless, much of the estimated volume in this sector was driven by estimates for misreporting for which mechanisms exist (through 100% observer coverage) to correct any errors in catch reports and, given the nature of access arrangements under the VDS, it is likely that economic rents associated with any misreporting would be captured anyway.

This result should be seen in that context. The tropical longline and southern longline sectors accounted for 21% and 7% of the overall volume respectively. The purse seine fishery also contributed to slightly under half the overall ex-vessel of IUU product ($152.26m), although the higher market value of target species in the longline fisheries meant that TLL sector made a proportionally higher contribution by value (40%) than volume to overall estimates. The southern longline fishery had the lowest overall estimates of IUU product value (14%).

Of the main target species, yellowfin (YFT) accounted for the highest volume of IUU product, making up 33% of the total estimated IUU volume, and 25% of the ex-vessel value. The total estimated IUU volume of YFT equated to around 9.4% of the estimated total catch of YFT in the WCPFC-CA area during 2019. However, because much of the YFT volume is driven by misreporting in the purse seine fishery which is subject to 100% observer coverage, this should not result in ‘unaccounted for’ catch. Skipjack (SKJ) accounted for the next highest volume, making up around 27% of the overall estimated volume, but only 20% of the overall ex-vessel value given its lower market price relative to other species.

The total estimated IUU volume of SKJ equated to around 2.5% of the estimated total catch of SKJ in the WCPFC-CA area in 2019. Bigeye (BET) accounted for 17% of the overall estimated IUU volume, but 20% of the ex-vessel value. The proportionally higher contribution to the ex-vessel value total reflects the fact that much of the estimated IUU volume came from the longline sector which achieves relatively high market prices. The total estimated IUU volume of BET equates to around 24.3% of the estimated total catch of BET in the WCPFC-CA area during 2019.  Importantly, this does not necessarily mean that 24.3% of additional BET have been taken in addition to reported figures. For example, some of the BET estimates relate to over-reporting in the purse seine fishery. Albacore (ALB) accounted for 2% of the overall estimated IUU volume and total ex-vessel IUU value. The total estimated ALB IUU volume equates to around 2.8% of the estimated total ALB catch in the WCPFC-CA area in 2019.

ANALYSIS AND MAIN MESSAGES

Apart from the headline volume and value estimates, there are a number of key messages arising from the analysis: 

  • The reduction in estimates since 2016 is positive, but should be seen in context - The overall volume and value of IUU estimated in this 2020 update are a substantial reduction on those from 2016. Broadly, this is a very positive result for the region and its MCS efforts, but should be seen in context. The 2016 estimates were a ‘first cut’ with highly uncertain data across a number of key risk areas. On that basis, estimates were kept deliberately broad to account for high levels of uncertainty. For the 2020 study, new information became available to estimate some risks – most notably illegal transhipping and longline misreporting – while information previously used to quantify risks for the 2016 study were not available for the current study period. Broadly, it was these changes in the information base that produced the biggest overall changes in volume and value estimates. In addition, incorporating one new risk (exceeding effort limits) and removing another (unauthorised landing of catch in foreign ports) together with changes in fishing effort, catch rates and fish price also influenced overall estimates. In practice, the 2020 estimates should be seen as the next evolution in an ongoing process to refine approaches to quantify the nature and scale of IUU in the Pacific region;

  • Cooperation works - While IUU fishing in its various guises will require ongoing attention from FFA members, there is little doubt that the MCS measures FFA members and their partners/regional secretariats have implemented over recent decades have had a profound impact on both the nature and volume of IUU fishing in the region. Cooperative regional MCS measures such as the establishment of the FFA Vessel Register and Good Standing requirement, the agreement of Harmonised Minimum Terms and Conditions (HMTCs) for foreign fishing vessel access, the establishment of the FFA Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), the development of common regional data collection protocols and forms, the establishment of regional Pacific Island Regional Fisheries Observer (PIRFO) standards and training for observers, the Niue Treaty and Subsidiary Arrangement to facilitate cooperation on MCS including information sharing and coordinated Regional Operations, amongst others, have substantially strengthened the MCS environment across all member zones compared to individual members acting alone. The relatively low estimates of IUU activity in the FFA region compared to many other parts of the world is practical evidence of the MCS framework’s success;

  • Estimates continue to be dominated by the licensed fleet - A key outcome of the 2016 study was that estimates of IUU volume and value were dominated by the licensed fleet. The 2020 update shows a similar pattern with unlicensed fishing accounting for only 5% of overall IUU activity;

  • Unlicensed fishing remains an issue at the margins - unlicensed fishing continued to be an issue at the margins, both figuratively and literally. Overall, evidence for unlicensed fishing by vessels on the FFA VR and/or WCPFC RFV was very limited with no confirmed instances of unlicensed fishing by these vessels detected during regional operations and few national level detections/prosecutions during the study period. The main exception to this is on the fringes of the FFA region, and in particular on the western fringe adjacent to the domestic fleets of south east Asian countries, where evidence of regular incursions was stronger;

  • Priorities for strengthening MCS measures are in the longline sectors– Of the two main gear types operating in the Pacific Islands region, the purse seine fleet is subject to comparatively very strong MCS arrangements including 100% observer coverage, a requirement to tranship in port and a requirement for e-reporting under the Parties to the Nauru Agreement’s (PNA) Vessel Days Scheme (VDS). Moreover, the majority of fishing effort occurs in EEZs subject to strong coastal State MCS. In contrast, MCS arrangements in place for the longline sector are weaker with lower observer coverage, a far higher proportion of effort on the high seas, and a higher proportion of the catch transhipped at sea which limits opportunities for port State MCS measures. Particular focus should be on strengthening measures to monitor and validate catch both on longline vessels and as it moves through the supply chain. Given the shared nature of stocks in the region, it is important that strong catch validation measures are applied across the full footprint of stocks, including on the high seas;

  •  Estimates of illegal transhipping have come down, but monitoring and control remain a work in progress - The availability of WCPFC Transhipment Declaration information together with Global Fishing Watch’s (GFW) Automatic Identification System (AIS) dataset has provided considerably better information on the scope for unauthorised transhipment than was available to the 2016 study. Broadly, this has led to a substantial reduction in overall estimates of volume and value. Nevertheless, important areas of uncertainty remain in the at sea transhipment component of the longline supply chain and monitoring and control remain a work in progress. In particular, improvements are required to strengthen the implementation of the observer program such that information provided by vessels on the volume and species composition of fish transhipped can be validated against independent observer estimates;

  • ‘IUU’ is not straightforward – while the formal definition of ‘IUU fishing’ in the IPOA-IUU is relatively clear in theory, applying it for the purposes of quantifying its nature and extent presents a range of practical challenges. In addition to the inevitable uncertainties in the underlying data, resolving what should, and shouldn’t, be considered in estimates frequently requires judgements that can have a large impact on overall volume and value figures;

  • Ex-vessel value is not a good indicator of actual loss to FFA members– this is because the full value of the catch is not returned to coastal states under normal circumstances (only a proportion of total revenue is, typically through access fees). A better benchmark of revenue forgone by Pacific Island countries is likely to be the rent generated by vessels from IUU activity, however, even then the nature of access arrangements such as the VDS mean that economic rents are associated with many IUU activities (e.g. misreporting) are likely to be captured anyway. Taking into account estimates of profitability during the study period in the purse seine and longline sectors, as well as the likelihood that rents associated with some risks (notably misreporting in the purse seine sector) are likely to be captured through the VDS, we estimate the rent associated with ex-vessel IUU value to be $43.18m. This is a considerable reduction on the 2016 estimate ($152.67m), but may still overestimate actual loss. More accurate estimates would require additional analysis of the unique circumstances of each IUU risk.

WHAT ADDITIONAL MEASURES CAN BE TAKEN TO BETTER DETER AND ELIMINATE IUU?

As outlined in the 2016 study, considerable efforts have been taken at the national, sub-regional (FFA/SPC/PNA) and regional levels (WCPFC) to mitigate IUU fishing in Pacific tuna fisheries. Moreover, a range of additional MCS measures have been taken since then (e.g. establishment of the Pacific Maritime Security Program - PSMP, strengthening of longline unloadings monitoring coverage in FFA member ports) which have better informed the 2020 update estimates and contributed to the lower overall estimates.

Nevertheless, ongoing uncertainties in relation to a number of key risk areas highlight priority areas for future MCS development. In the longline sectors, the priority is to strengthen measures to monitor and validate catch of licensed vessels throughout the supply chain. Despite good improvements in some areas (e.g. unloadings coverage in FFA ports), current monitoring arrangements remain limited for some fleets. Measures that could be taken to strengthen monitoring include strengthening observer coverage (for those longline fleets not meeting the 5% WCPFC benchmark, as well as FFA domestic fleets), more active cross-verification of independent data sources to identify reporting discrepancies (e.g. logsheet Vs unloading, etc), an enhanced focus on investigating reporting offenses, wider use of electronic reporting and monitoring, and the development of an effective catch documentation scheme (CDS) for key species. In addition, more effective monitoring and control of at-sea transshipment is required including strengthening arrangements for the implementation of the transshipment observer program.

In the purse seine sector, notwithstanding recent complications arising from COVID- 19 restrictions, the MCS arrangements in place are considerably stronger than those for longline. Priorities include continuing efforts to validate estimates of catch composition and monitoring and control of FAD usage

—

So this set us for the following priorities until the next one:

  • As in the 2016, the study concluded that the main priorities for strengthening MCS are in the longline sectors across both the tropical tuna and southern longline fisheries.

  • The key issue is to continue to strengthen catch monitoring/validation throughout the supply chain a range of possible measures including greater use of analytical tools to cross-verify logsheet reporting and active follow up of discrepancies, increased observer coverage and utilisation of electronic monitoring and a focus on the roll out of Catch Documentation Schemes (CDS). (CDS is one of my babies)

  • There is also a need to strengthen transhipment monitoring and control and build capacity to independently validate transhipment declarations and activity. This includes a focus on better monitoring of offloading vessels, both in port and at sea and promoting electronic monitoring or 100% observer coverage as a condition of high seas transhipment?

  • We need to keep being proactive in the review of CMM 09 – 06 on transhipment and properly define the application of ‘impractical’ in allowing for high seas transhipment for longline vessels and promoting longline transhipment in designated ports and the associated enforcement of measures to validate transhipment reporting and records.

  • The study confirms that the purse seine sector is generally subject to strong MCS and the main needs are to ensure good systems are in place to validate catch composition and that effective control of FAD usage and registration and tracking in place

  • The study also confirmed the important priority of ensuring that systems were in place across the region to ensure the ongoing and enhanced monitoring and analysis of key metrics in support of more ore real-time analysis of key risks and trends. This will require systematic collection, analysis and understanding of MCS data in the support of the MCS continuous improvement framework agreed.

—

Even my work on scales, PSM and CDS got highlighted as ways to go (blush)

Seafood Traceability: Aligning RFMO catch documentation schemes to combat IUU fishing /  by Francisco Blaha

The 1st thing I knew about this study by the good people of the EU IUU Fishing Coalition was almost 2 years ago when Gilles Hosch and I were approached to write it, but the project didn’t eventuate for various reasons. I had no idea what had happened to it until now and was happy to read and agree with most of its content.

 Overall I’m very pleased to see many of the ideas we were presenting with Gilles from 2015 to the 2019 period being echoed today. It meant that while being groundbreakingly then, weren’t too far fetched and more institutionally oriented works are expanding on them.

At some stage FAO will publish the latest work I been involved with FAO (Critical Tracking Events (CTEs) and Key Data Elements (KDEs) along the wild capture and aquaculture value chains) that will validate (and expand) on the Key Data Elements they propose, and with emphasis on the different

 I like the last part of the introduction that I quote here below… but as usual, read the original! 

 In order to improve and broaden the scope and effectiveness of CDS, this analysis proposes a series of recommendations including a baseline for how to align and expand CDS coverage globally in order to close the remaining traceability loopholes using a generic CDS model. Informed by the main key data elements (KDEs) recommended in recent years by the seafood industry, civil society and in FAO publications, this study further proposes minimum standards applicable not to just mono-specific fisheries, to which current CDS mainly apply, but also to multi-specific, small-scale and recreational fisheries which are increasingly involved in the implementation of the catch documentation schemes. Ultimately, it is important to point out that the notion of CDS alignment is part of a gradual process that differs from the harmonisation of existing CDS. While harmonisation should be considered as the ultimate objective, the diversity and complexity of existing CDS requires that RFMOs first implement processes for mutual recognition and interoperability of their systems. This step should promote the adoption of the minimum alignment standards presented in this study as this will facilitate harmonisation, i.e. establishing a single, global CDS which would reflect a combination of all existing ones. 

 

The fisherman that wrote the inspection guides /  by Francisco Blaha

Generally, fisheries inspectors come into the job from an enforcement/surveillance background (i.e. ex-navy, coastguard, police), from marine sciences (university graduates) and in the lesser cases, ex fisheries observers. But hardly ever from the fishing industry, this always struck me as odd, having done that road myself. Particularly since my insider knowledge it has been always being welcomed by the officers I work with. I have maintained many times… "it is impossible to appropriately measure or regulate what you do not understand"

On that line, over a year ago Duncan Copeland from Trygg Matt Tracking (TMT) contracted me to write in english a set of ‘MCS Practitioners Introductory Guides’ to help fisheries inspectors in particularly those for Western Africa  with the practical side of fishing in a simple and illustrated way. 

The project took a bigger dimension when the International MCS Network (iMCSn) got also involved so the guides took on a more international role

Right from my 1st draft, it became then a collaborative effort with revisions and additions by good friends and colleagues such as Duncan Copeland, Stig Fjellberg and Callum Vale from TMT, Mark Young from iMCSn and Hugh Walton from FFA.

Then there the text was agreed, it came the fundamental document design phase and finding pictures to illustrate many of the topics discussed. I was fortunate to be able provide many of them that come from the my work with pacific island colleagues and vessels over the last years. Then the review of the Spanish translations, so it was a long but very instructive process.

The first fishing gear specific guides on Longline Fishing, Pole and Line Fishing, and Purse Seine Fishing, are all very pertinent to the WCPO, and have been now published. To further support capacity building to inspectors and non-inspectors, we worked on a fourth guide for Industrial Fishing Vessel Inspections , that is complementary to the gear guides, and tackles an introductory understanding of the key considerations and needs during vessel inspections. Further, two more guides one for Refrigerated Carrier Vessel (Reefers) and a further one for Trawl Fishing are planned for release in early 2022.

The guides provides an overview of how to recognise vessels by the specific gear type, a description of the fishing operation, an overview of the gear and related equipment used, guidance on vessel positional tracking, and key issues for fisheries compliance and enforcement officers to be aware of during the conduct of an inspection. And as such they are also a good resource for people in the media, non-specialists in NGOS and institutions with an interest in fisheries.

Needless to say, I’ll be always very thankful (and proud) for the opportunity that TMT and iMCSn gave me in having a key role in these publications and the excellent work done on the design and quality of the final product. But even more thankful to every fishing boat I have worked in my life, every skipper and fellow crewmember that spent time teaching me stuff and everyone one that did not mind me taking pictures while they are doing their jobs!

And they are available in English, Español, Français. Please share far and wide.

 EN ESPAÑOL

EN FRANÇAIS

ENGLISH LANGUAGE


On the 2020 WCPO Tuna stock status report, Harvest Strategies and Crew labour /  by Francisco Blaha

Every year at this time of the year (pre WCPFC meeting) one of the key publications for the region is published: SPC’s The western and central Pacific tuna fishery: 2020 overview and status of stocks. And this is the de facto publication when it comes to the sustainability of fisheries in the region (and I’m proud of having being involved in the cover picture)

The tuna fisheries assessment report (the "TFAR") provides current information on the tuna fisheries of the WCPO and the fish stocks (mainly tuna) that are impacted by them. The information provided in this report is summary in nature, but a list of references (mostly accessible via the internet) is included for those seeking further details.  

This report focuses on the primary tuna stocks targeted by the main WCPO industrial fisheries - skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis), yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), bigeye tuna (T. obesus) and South Pacific albacore tuna (T. alalunga).

The report is divided into three parts: the first section provides an overview of the fishery, with emphasis on developments over the past few years; the second summarises the most recent information on the status of the stocks; and the third summarises information concerning the interaction between the tuna fisheries, other associated and dependent species and their environment. 

The data used in compiling the report are those which were available to the Oceanic Fisheries Programme (OFP) at the time of publication, and are subject to change as improvements continue to be made to recent and historical catch statistics from the region.

I like to get the 1st read of the graphs… stocks are sustainable in the WCPO, but most interesting for me is some of the things I read in between the lines

I just bring up is 2 things today:  the MSC pressure on getting the tropical tuna measure (TTM) and the Harvest strategy (HaSt) agreement in place at the WCPFC meeting and working conditions on longline crew.

The tropical tuna measure (TTM) and the Harvest strategy (HaSt) agreement is perhaps the most complex issue faced at the WCPFC... is highly technical wilt a lot of moving parts of which harvest strategies are one... I just want to give a word of caution if you decide to tackle it, as is very easy to fall into holes and potentially antagonise parties. Is important to keep in mind that the WCPFC Harvest Strategy Workplan is delayed not because of a lack of dialogue and understanding of its importance of it, but mostly because the debate on harvest strategy elements has become a geopolitical tool used by some DWFN to influence future allocations and (of course!) entrench privilege.

As per the MSC angle, they have been publicising a lot… well... if there is no HaSt agreement, MSC will no doubt be the most affected in all of this... the reality is that they have more at stake and to lose than SIDS... if they were to suspend the certification of the key fishery that brings most of the volume under their logo they will lose a LOT of money...

Would they shoot their own foot based on a process that is delayed due to politics? Doubt it! they need the fishery, more than the fishery needs them. A few years ago they were in a similar spot in terms of compartmentalisation around FADs... so they gage themselves time (3 years to suspend it) instead of suspending the fisheries because they are not sustainable!... and now looks like there is no need to suspend it because it looks like tuna fishing with FADs can be MSC certified. 

The Tuna market depends on the WCPO catches... you think that if the tuna fisheries of the region were to lose MSC certification all the canneries would go: Ahhh no... we not gonna can tuna anymore because is not MSC certified? of course not! they will keep going, because people will keep eating tuna.

The stocks are healthy (as you can see above)... because FFA/PNA continues to manage and sustain their fishery, against the raft of obligations they have signed onto at the pace that ensures their capacity is catered for and fits their purpose in the short to medium term with the long term outlook for a regionally sustained fishery. A lot is at stake, the HaSt work will be good for MSC, but that's not the primary purpose... the reason why MSC can certify the tuna fishery is that it is managed sustainably by the SIDS and not the opposite 

Crew condition in the Longline fishery… in page 37: you see this graphh… fishing effort, in fleet sizes and number of hooks fished (bottom), for the longline fishery in the WCPFC

in the 90s when i was fishing these waters, were the heyday of LL in the WCPO. Today as you can see there is only 1/3 of that fleet left, and is soaking over twice the number of hooks. 

Deck and gear setting technology is still the same. So the only way to duplicate the number of hooks soaking is by more than duplicating the crew's workload. 

This is pure exploitation, on top of that, they are recruiting crew from by based on exploitation because the worsening economic condition and high population density of many SE Asian countries and so pay them every time shittier wages as to keep your numbers above the breaking line...  

as the report that WWF presented recently for the WCPFC says in the conclusion... "Only in Superman’s Bizarro World can the WCPFC establish binding labour standards for observers, ensure the safety of whale sharks and cetaceans, but not establish  labour standards for the wellbeing of crew"

If i only needed one proof to support the importance of the lead that FFA and Indonesia is taking on the crew welfare CMM it would be on this graph. 

Why I dislike products of privilege like indexes, private certifications and fingerpointing Reports in fisheries /  by Francisco Blaha

Yrah the last week has been very eventful with news on PIPA and a new fishing index…

don’t know who to attribute this one other that twitter… let me know if you know the author please. But I feel like the one in the right

As per PIPA… while I could dwell on technicalities, and how the general management framework will maintain the tuna stocks and the standard 24nm exclusion zone for commercial fishing around all islands (VMS controlled) in Kiribati, and so on… one answer suffices for me: 

"The notion that a group of privileged foreigner will know better what is best for iKiribati people was fundamental part of colonialism and thankfully finished on the 12 July 1979 with their independence" End of story!

As per the Index… I knew about it from a while ago (2019) since they wanted me involved and politely declined after a good and frank talk to them... and don’t get me wrong, they are nice and well intended people… no doubt

But my reaction to indexes is always based on 2 questions:

1-    What’s the point? We all know what is wrong, we need help on how to fix it

and

2:  How do you avoid being unfair?

 Lets say just for an example: 

Country A in Europe is rich and as a EEZ of 10 km2 and a budget for fisheries of 10 million that is 0.5% of their GDP, and 500 years of experience in bureaucracy. institutions and governments

Country B in the Pacific has a EEZ of 10000000 km2, a budget for fisheries of 1 million that is 10% of the GDP and was a colony until 1980, so has 40 years of experience in bureaucracy. institutions and governments

Who would you think will score better in any metrics based index?

Which bring me to back to question 1: What is the point?

Yes fisheries need more budgets, better management, better science, less subsidies, , better data, bla, blah... Tell me something new...

It feels like an echo chamber for people on phone keyboards about the collapse of world fisheries, the short-sightedness of Kiribati with PIPA... And so on... and all from 1000 dollar phones and lives in privilege

Chances are that the budget for the graphic design of most of those studies is more than the annual salary of the fisheries inspectors and observers I work with! And believe they do much more for sustainable fisheries than any index or report will ever do.

I'm just tired of well off people behind desks telling others working at the front end of fisheries (and mostly poorer than them) how shit they are at their jobs... how they are failing the world they care so much about (while their livelihood does not depend on fisheries)

Why the researchers for those publications and those that dismay about PIPA don't go and do something practical, bring a solution, get you hands dirty...

Even if I disagree with what whatever action they want to do... I prefer that, to any glossy and manicured studies, index or report that tell us stuff we know, but don’t bring new solutions or money to test them.

 Ok... enough... sorry for the visceral reaction... is one of those days.

A practical take on the duty to uphold human rights in seafood workplaces /  by Francisco Blaha

I’m usually writing about academic papers I read and like, so I give a go to rescue things I like (or not)… yet this is the first time that I do one that has my name on it!! To be honest not in my wildest dreams when I stared fishing in the mid 80s, would I ever thought to be in the place I’m now, doing the variety of work I do and be helping to write a academic paper on labour rights for fellow fishers and seafood workers!

Fishers are some of most resilient, positive and hardcore people you’ll ever meet. Always among brothers when with them even if I work for regulators now.

This paper is the brainchild of Katrina Nakamura, with Yoshitaka Ota and me as “uncles”. The origin of the paper was in the work we did (with Katrina) for the FAO Guidelines on social responsibility a couple of years ago.

After the FAO work, Katrina involved a group that included other well-known authors that dod not work with us on the guidelines, but have amazing knowledge on the topic… But something I learned on fishing boats is that they don’t work with too many captain and as there were positions and each had his battle horses that they weren’t ready to set aside a few left.

Then when it came to the editors at the magazine it got even more complicated… so the final result is a bit complex for my simple brain… yet I’m the least qualified of the authors in a topic where other than having been fisherman (and a seafood worker) I have limited experience.

And believe me… is so much easier (in my personal opinion) to work in the world of IUU fishing, MCS and data… than it is in the labour and human rights side of fisheries… so many sides and agendas that are hard to accommodate… for something that should be easier in my small and simple head:

  1. The rights of a person working in fishing are the same to a person working in a bank, or driving a truck, working in parliament or milking cows. 

  2.  The protection they deserve should be aligned to the risk of their job, which the way, in the case of a fisherman is most dangerous in the world (estimated 35000 a year…i.e. 1 every 15 minutes!)

  3. Their rights and protections should not be dependent on the colour of the passports, as part of the aleatory event of their nationalities, and definitively not of whatever flag is in the vessel they are fishing or the country they are working.

  4. Seafood buyers cannot externalise their due diligence of labour rights for fishers and seafood workers to a private label that may not be there in 20 years… while the government department that is responsible for that at the flag state will be there.

Of course is not so easy…

In any case, I rescue the flowing elements of the paper… but as always… read the original (is for free!)

Highlights

  • The paper carefully tracks the fundamental rights of all people in seafood workplaces and the business duty to uphold them.

    Fundamental workplace protections were compiled from legal instruments applicable to fisheries and aquaculture worldwide.

  • Every person is legally-protected from forced labour throughout the work cycle universally and at sea as on land.

  • At minimum businesses must provide rights training, a clear agreement, responsive channel and safety in hazardous conditions

 Abstract

Too many fishing crew have died aboard vessels known for fisheries crime. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of the ‘fundamental’ rights of all people working in the seafood sector and the business duty to prevent rights violations, as it is organized as minimum workplace procedures that are legally-established in international law, in customary use and effective. The authours searched for workplace guidance for respecting rights and then conducted research to identify the legal minimums that states have signed and ratified as essential, and are also in scope of the business duty that is set out in the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, 2011. The result is a short list of workplace procedures which are:

  1. intended to prevent rights violations particularly forced labour,

  2. suited to diverse types of operations in different languages, customs or circumstances,

  3. appropriate to all people in a seafood workplace whether they hold a contract or not, and that allow for

  4. tracking labour conditions in ways which could be verified by the people working therein or their representatives.

To uphold fundamental rights in seafood workplaces, employers are to provide rights training for all new recruits in a language they understand, a safe, responsive channel for workplace grievances linking into the line of command, provisions for safe work in hazardous conditions, and among others, safe passage for individuals choosing to leave. At sea as on land, every individual has fundamental rights to legally-established assurances in seafood workplaces.

Conclusion

The main conclusion of this paper is that raising rights awareness among regulators, the industry and all people on the job is key to upholding rights in seafood workplaces and preventing forced labour. Pointedly, human rights due diligence is a preventative protocol for businesses and governments to fulfil together. The exercise holds great promise for tracking then preventing or mitigating risky conditions but can fall short where one party fails to recognize fundamental rights. 

The protocol may not encompass all the relevant basic human rights protections required in the workplace, for example to bargain collectively. It can also fail if used to reduce business risks by identifying and then suppressing rights violations faced by people in work. A claim of intolerance to forced labour means little without corresponding mechanisms to hear labour disputes as they arise in seafood workplaces and to respond before they escalate. Exercised with respect for these limitations, human rights due diligence could become a powerful agent for change.

There is a learning curve to sensitize seafood operators, maritime officials, prosecutors and global grocery executives to labour risks and conditions—as they are defined in law but also as they occur locally, especially debt bondage and debt coercion—but the timeline should be short. Slavery has been illegal universally since 1926. A hundred years on, enforcement agencies like Interpol and the Financial Action Task Force (forced labour is a predicate crime to money laundering) are cracking down on labour exploitation in industrial production once again. Withholding wages, identification documents or even access to a first aid kit persist in seafood workplaces today in spite of labour law and occupational health and safety regulations (IOM, 2021).

Researchers also could serve the enormous and still unfinished task of abolition by asking, what does a safe workplace look like from the perspective of a fishing crew member, shrimp harvester or peeler?, then build a conceptual framework around that centre.

When the ex fisherman went to parliament to make a submission on IUU fishing /  by Francisco Blaha

Last September I was invited by the NZ Parliament Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, to make a submission on their enquire on IUU fishing in the WCPO. Besides being a great honour to provide a written submission, I was actually really keen to make an oral one… as I had never been to parliament here in NZ! Not to be due to COV1D, so I did one on zoom on zoom that was recorded.

In any case here is a transcript for whatever is worth it… while we do have problems, NZ is as usual punching above their division in doing good work in my opinion

—

Kia Ora

My name is Francisco Blaha, and I’m honoured to be asked by this committee for my opinions on the aspects of fisheries that have been my life since I was 18 years old, and given the opportunity to - in a minimal way - payback for how much NZ offered me. I’m proud to call the Western and Central Pacific home since 1991. In 1995 I arrived in New Zealand/Aotearoa on a fishing boat, and without knowing anyone in the country, based only on a feeling, decided that I wanted to stay. A few weeks later I had an official job offer that led me to a work visa based on my qualifications and experience. Aotearoa has been my home since then, it has offered me nothing less than respect and opportunities, as well as family and friends… and you as elected government officials have been a fundamental part of that. Thank you

—

I have deliberately focused my submission on the very specific ToRs and the technical understanding of IUU fishing, and therefore left aside parallel but no less important issues such a crew conditions, sustainability of bycatch species, subsidies, and geopolitics just to name a few where I work (and NZ has a leading role). 

Also, I did not want my submission to be the usual litany of doom that generally dominates the conversation, yet offers very little by way of practical suggestions…This is why I’ve also tried to talk about successes on recent or ongoing projects funded by NZ, rather than the theory, to inspire you to look into and further support similar initiatives.

This is not to say that they aren’t any problems… admittedly the opposite. Yet there are also many good people and institutions in the WCPO that get up every day and do exemplary things that never get recognised, they run success stories that never get on the news… 

I’m fortunate to also work in other regions beyond the Western and Central Pacific, such as the Eastern Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian ocean… and the tools and management strategies we take for granted in our region (constant VMS, joint surveillance programmes, Port state measures, complete vessels registries, harmonised licensed condition among coastal states, electronic reporting and monitoring, etc) are not even in the pipeline there.

Of course, it is not perfect, but is better than in many other places… Exemplary institutions like the Pacific Islands Fisheries Forum Agency (FFA) and Pacific Community (SPC) that will speak later to you do not exist anywhere else, and would not have had the opportunity to support their members in the way they do, if it wasn't for NZ/Aotearoa’s support.

For the understanding of how “IUU fishing” operates and how it impacts the Pacific Islands, FFA commissioned an IUU quantification analysis in 2015 for its membership from MRAG (they are also made a submission), that was presented and published in 2016, it showed very low comparative IUU impact in general terms, and allowed them to focus resources in the very specific areas identified, with misreporting by the licensed fleet the most important one. No other region in the world is presently able to do the same. 

But more importantly, this quantification study has been updated and is now scheduled to be presented and published on the 24th of this month. As one of the authors working on that update, I will not pre-empt the results, but it is broadly positive with a substantial reduction on the impact of IUU fishing in all areas studied. And while new MCS strategies, new data sets, changes in estimation approach in effort, and in prices have all contributed to better estimates we are cautious as care is needed in the interpretation, as multiple factors are at play. Yet the broad results are clear; the pacific island countries are controlling and minimising the incidence of IUU in their waters, and this is something to be recognised and celebrated.

I will focus the rest of my time on what I think are the four main outstanding problem areas in regards to IUU fishing and then the positive role that NZ has played in the region. 

Transhipment in the High Seas 

The WCPFC made a rule in 2009 stipulating there shall be no transhipment on the high seas except where a member country has determined that it is impractical for a vessel to come to port– but the Commission did not define “impractical”, thereby creating a loophole.

Contrary to the Commission’s intentions and rules, the number of high seas transhipments in the western and Central Pacific is increasing. Reports to the Commission indicate that such transhipments have increased from 544 operations in 2014 to 1,472 in 2019. 

It appears that high seas transhipments are becoming the norm, rather than the exception.

All reported high seas transhipments were conducted by fishing vessels registered to just 4 countries and one fishing entity that NZ has different levels of engagement with vessels of China, Chinese Taipei/Taiwan, Korea and Vanuatu accounted for almost 90% of those transhipments. 

NZ’s strong links with Vanuatu, Korea and China (bilaterally) and Chinese Taipei /Taiwan (via APEC) could be of fundamental influence to reform this clearly problematic situation that the WCPFC seems to be stuck in.

Budget, talent acquisition and retention in PICs fisheries administrations 

There is no correlation between the budgets allocated to fisheries Monitoring Control and Surveillance activities, to the value of fisheries for the country. 

Fisheries compliance is increasingly becoming more and more a market access requirement via catch certifications and a future Catch Documentation Scheme. Yet the funding for talent acquisition and retention in the fisheries authorities organisations that underpin fisheries controls and trade is woefully low in comparison of the value of the fishery they are responsible for.

I understand that the competing needs at the country level (i.e. health, infrastructure, education, communications, etc) need to be attended to as well. 

Yet at times, we get criticised for saying that we expect excellence from the fisheries administrations and inspectors while they are often budgeted below mediocrity.

My fear at times is that fisheries compliance keeps piling on new systems, risk analysis, bigger/better information management systems and so on all the time, yet in the end, these are more responsibilities (i.e. work) for the people expected to use them; without giving them (and their institutions) any tangible incentive to do so.

Some economic/technical support along these lines will be critical. Otherwise, we keep building bigger roofs over the same old foundations and that is never a good idea.

Regional Data Capabilities

As misreporting has been identified consistently as the main IUU issue in our region, the tools and capabilities of fisheries inspectors need to move towards accounting for more than having new patrol vessels or radars, for example.  

I strongly feel that up to date data capabilities such as those available to the banking or financial sector for both business intelligence and accounting are fundamental for the shared management and evaluation of compliance in fisheries.

New Zealand companies and research institutes such as Xero (https://www.xero.com/nz ), FishServe (https://www.fishserve.co.nz) and XERRA (https://www.xerra.nz) with his product Starboard Marine Intelligence (https://starboard.nz) have a lot to offer to the region in these areas.

New Zealand’s present and future efforts in regard to IUU fishing.

New Zealand’s contribution towards the comparatively low levels of IUU fishing and long-term sustainability of the tuna fisheries in the region, has been fantastic in my opinion, and NZ is seen as a distinctively trusted partner.

Uniquely among other donors in the region, there is only one NZ flagged PS seiner operating in the WCPO fishery, hence assistance is offered with no ulterior motives and most importantly is perceived as such.

NZ’s is very bi-culturally distinctive in comparison to other donors, and its long term “fraternity” to Pacific Islanders has resulted in a solid bridge of trust. 

Colonialism remains in very recent history in the Pacific (at 56 I’m older than most countries I work with). These nations are still developing institutional capacity—and that they don’t necessarily take kindly to being told what to do by former colonisers. NZ does a great service by working with them, not on behalf of them

In 22 years as a development consultant, the jobs I consider most successful have been funded by MFAT. My current work in the Marshall Islands fills me with pride and a sense of unique satisfaction to be New Zealander.

While my work with MFAT is very technical, it critically incorporates a sufficiently long-time frame as for me to be seen as one of the team, someone to be trusted and welcomed beyond just work, but into their whanau and community. And you can only do that with time. 

I was recently asked at the International Fisheries MCS network how were we able to achieve so many results in the 2nd year of assistance to the Marshall Islands? I replied: because I was working there in the first year and we were able to build trust, once that is in place, the achievements of the second year were easy.  

The double prong support to FFA and SPC, as well as bilateral assistance, is producing tangible results.

Conclusion

This house should be proud of the outstanding contribution that NZ has done to fight IUU fishing in the WCPO

My humble recommendations are

  • Further support the long term presence of culturally aware advisors working with partner governments under the principles of Tuia te here tangata: Making meaningful connections. To Thread Together Many Strands of People takes time, yet it is the most effective way forwards.

  • Use NZ mana as a trusted international partner to push the agenda for reform of present High Seas Transhipment at the highest level of bilateral relations with the main nations involved with it: China, Chinese Taipei /Taiwan, Korea and Vanuatu.

  • Support budget strengthening, talent acquisition and retention with the independent PICs fisheries administrations, through both strategies of: 

    • placing long term advisors in their fisheries authorities, and 

    • supporting specific know-how in cost recovery for regulatory organisations and incentive-based compliance for industry

  • Encourage a leap forwards in fisheries ICT including Data Management, Business Intelligence and visualisations capabilities, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to be spearheaded by SPC with the support of NZ organisations like Starboard, Xero and FishServe

  • Maintain budgetary support to FFA and SPC as the key fisheries organisations in the region.

Thank you again for your time.

Kia ū ki te whakapono, kia aroha tētahi ki te tētahi. Hold strong to your beliefs and love one another.

FFA Members position on key issue for the WCPFC 18 /  by Francisco Blaha

I take a compliment being asked by NGOs and some university groups on what are the issues that are key to the fisheries in the pacific. Yet, my answer seems to take them by surprise because always is: Ask them, ask the pacific islanders… I’m just here working for them, I’m a guest.

For many decades the key local institutions SPC, FFA and PNA have cemented their position as the support institutions for their members. They have their ears closers to the needs of their members than anyone else. So if you want to help the region, the best way is to put your money, expertise, and support behind the people already working here, the famous: support the locals!

Every year around this time, many papers that get piled up for discussion at the WCPFC meeting in December are presented and are for public scrutiny on the meeting website. 

One that is key in my opinion is the “FFA Members position on key issue for the WCPFC 18” this is not a long paper but it goes via a serious process of consultation by all members at various plenaries (I’m a witness of that process and is always a geta learning opportunity)

These are the key issue for the 17 coastal nations of the region that are fundamental and they all agree to it… so is easy… your wealthy institution wants to help on matters that are key to the region fisheries for the next year… put all you might and support behind the locals in the topics they believe are key.

For this year, they are:

Tropical Tuna measure 

As we have underlined in the past, FFA members will only support a cautious approach to changes to the current provisions in the Conservation and Management Measure (CMM) because, in addition to meeting its objectives, the current CMM already takes into account the best available scientific advice that while the status of the bigeye and yellowfin stocks is healthy, following the most recent changes that were made to the CMM in 2017 when the 4th month FAD closure was removed and the high seas FAD closure was reduced, there remains a need for a precautionary approach, especially noting the uncertainty in the assessments for these stocks. As FFA members have continued to highlight throughout this year, Pacific Islands economies are dependent on the tuna fishery and we cannot support actions that will jeopardise the stocks that we rely upon. 

FFA Members have engaged vigorously at the two Tropical Tuna Measure workshops, as would be expected for an issue of such importance to us, and we express our appreciation to you, Chair, for organizing these important opportunities to discuss the elements of this Commission's key Conservation and Management Measure with other WCPFC Members, Cooperating Non-members and Participating Territories (CCMs). 

We have made a number of suggestions with regard to revising the Tropical Tuna Measure during the workshop series and details of these can be found collated in the WCPFC Chair’s Consultative Draft of the Tropical Tuna CMM. 

Most importantly, in recognition of the sovereign rights of FFA Members who have established national longline limits under national laws with robust monitoring and management systems in place to implement these, FFA Members advise that longline fishing within our exclusive economic zones will be managed only through zone-based management, including the LL-VDS. FFA Members will no longer recognise any flag-based bigeye limits as applying to our zones. FFA members also emphasise the ultimate intention, as proposed in the text provided in relation to paragraph 44 of the revised CMM, to transition towards an equitable framework for the allocation of high seas fishing opportunities in the bigeye longline fishery. 

To sum up the basis for our proposed changes, FFA members attach high priority to maintaining the current careful balance of interests between fisheries and CCMs which has been achieved after a lengthy period of careful and considered development. If there are to be changes within the CMM, that balance needs to be maintained. Additionally, we take the advice of the Scientific Committee very seriously and insist on a cautious approach to any changes to the existing measures. We also note that, following the significant technical concerns of the SC, there will be an independent review in 2022 of the stock assessments for bigeye and yellowfin tuna and until the outcomes of this review are available any revisions to the Measure need to be suitably precautionary.

South Pacific albacore 

FFA members wish to convey our strong concerns in relation to the situation facing the South Pacific albacore stock. These concerns arise from the following factors: 

  • The necessity for strong management action by the Commission to rebuild the stock to support the economic viability of fleets, especially Pacific Islands domestic longline fleets; 

  • The latest stock assessment for South Pacific albacore which suggests that the stock status has continued to decline in recent years and that, without immediate cuts in catch and effort, the conditions under the TRP will not be achieved; 

  • Recent shift of effort from the tropical longline fishery resulting in increased targeting of South Pacific albacore by DWFNs on the high seas; 

  • The current measure is not effective in restricting catch and effort for SPA, as was clearly demonstrated during the CMR process at TCC17. 

 In light of these factors, FFA members call for immediate action by WCPFC18 to avoid further declines in the South Pacific albacore stock while work continues on a revised CMM for South Pacific albacore. Specifically, FFA members call for an immediate freeze in catch and effort for South Pacific albacore by CCM vessels operating on the high seas south of the equator. 

FFA members also wish to signal our intention to bring forward a revised South Pacific albacore CMM for consideration in 2022. We reiterate our commitment to the implementation of zone-based management arrangements for longline fisheries within our waters and will be seeking compatible limits on catch and effort for South Pacific albacore on the high seas.

Compliance Monitoring Scheme 

FFA Members have expressed significant concerns regarding the operation of the Compliance Monitoring Scheme (CMS) for a number of years now. These concerns include: 

  • The imbalance in the operation of the CMS between purse seine and longline obligations - arising from deficiencies in certain areas of the Commission’s management frameworks for these fisheries, particularly unfair focus and scrutiny on fisheries and fleets with better monitoring and reporting; 

  • The significant amount of time spent on the CMR process each year; 

  • The distortion of the CMS as a vehicle for prosecuting individual vessel infringements rather than for its intended purpose of identifying gaps and failures in the implementation of CMMs and putting in place steps to address those issues. 

The current CMS CMM contains specific elements that seek to address some of these concerns (for example, the Purpose, Principles and Future Work sections of the measure). These CMS elements have been agreed by all CCMs, therefore highlighting their importance and CCMs’ commitment to their implementation. FFA Members have taken the lead in seeking to address this work. We have invested significant time and effort to lead work on audit points and the development of a risk-based assessment framework, and we have championed the development and use of aggregated tables with the support of the WCPFC Secretariat. However, due to a range of reasons, essential CMS work is still incomplete. In this context, rather than investing further time in the implementation of the current measure, FFA members suggest the WCPFC focuses its collective efforts on progressing the critical suite of future work which will ensure that future implementation of the CMS will achieve the purpose, goals and principles that the Commission committed to in adopting CMM 2019-06. 

Labour Standards 

The issue of crew safety, including poor working conditions, mistreatment of fishing crew and allegations of forced labour, has remained in the spotlight throughout 2021. The development of a CMM on labour standards for fishing crew remains a priority for FFA Members as reflected by our active participation in the inter-sessional working group. While FFA Members recognise that a significant amount of work has been done to develop the CMM, we recognise that there are a number of issues that still need to be worked through. We attach significant importance to improving the safety and working conditions of crew on board vessels fishing under the WCPF Convention. Crew play an integral role in the economic security of this region. We want to ensure the WCPFC treats this issue seriously, and FFA members are prepared to continue investing the time to do so throughout 2022.

 So yeah… there you go… support the locals

Marine species conservation at CITES: How does media coverage inform or misinform? /  by Francisco Blaha

As you may know, I have always been quite critical of the media coverage on fisheries issues, which I see as biased and holding fisheries to a much higher level than all the issues in land… example somehow the environmental impact of trawling 3% of a region to remove biomass is much worse than ploughing half a country where everything that was there was killed to plant an imported species. 

So yea when I see a paper that in the abstract says: The contribution of marine species exploitation to local and global food security issues and fisher livelihoods is not discussed at all. Advocates from environmental non-profit groups dominate the list of interviewed experts, with alternative perspectives from groups linked to sustainable management like UNFAO (the United Nations agency with a fisheries mandate) and academics, rarely mentioned. Additionally, the fishing industry’s perspective on issues surrounding the conservation of commercially exploited marine species is rarely represented. Recommendations for both follow-up research and practical steps to ensure a more balanced inclusion of the perspectives of key stakeholders are included.

 I’m immediately interested in it… and not surprisingly I actually know personally 3 of the authors (and I really like them as people – Matt, Daniel & Kim ) and know via social media the corresponding author (David).

The paper focuses on CITES, yet there are soo many transferable lessons to the wider fisheries issues,and I REALLY like the illustrations.

I absolutely recommend you read the original.

I just quote (hoping I don't get in trouble with copyright) some of the bits that I like the most!

How are marine species issues discussed? 

The striking difference in how threatened terrestrial species are discussed (cute, intelligent, shy) vs. how threatened marine organisms are discussed (ecologically important, in some degree of conservation trouble) is perhaps reflective of an ongoing divide over the role of commercially exploited marine life in wildlife conservation discourse. Historically in Western nations, fish have often been perceived and portrayed as a natural resource (i.e., food) rather than wildlife, a characterization that may alter public perceptions as well as downstream policy and practice relative to biodiversity conservation approaches . The patterns identified here may be taxonomic in nature (mammals vs. fish) or may be related to Western systems of food production and economic systems which have discursively transformed wildlife or ecosystems into “natural resources” 

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 Bias in coverage was identified in terms of the types of expertise and their associated perspectives that were featured in media coverage. Significant perspectives integral to the management of marine species (e.g., government officials with expertise in fisheries, UNFAO experts, academics) were rarely featured in media coverage. Additionally, the workings of CITES and associated provisions, procedures, powers, and limitations are mostly unexplained. How conservation issues are portrayed in the press both reflects and influences public understanding of environmental problems and their solutions. These findings identify possible gaps in public discourse and understanding of the conservation and management of commercially exploited marine species, which may be corrected by targeted outreach efforts. Promisingly, communication of facts related to the management of socio-environmental systems can be successful in shaping stakeholders’ perceptions , though facts alone do not change people’s minds .

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 The disproportionate coverage of environmental non-profit perspectives relative to the perspectives of industry and expert scientific analysis, including in some cases quoting whole sections of NGO press releases verbatim without analysis or context, is potentially cause for concern in terms of providing the public with a complete, balanced understanding of these issues. While the economic importance of trade in a species should not ever justify ignoring scientific evidence of conservation concerns, it is noteworthy that important issues of food security and livelihoods in developing nations are almost totally absent from these discussions, and that the intergovernmental expert perspective of the UN mandated agency for these issues (UNFAO) and independent experts such as TRAFFIC and the IUCN was rarely presented. Additionally, a recent review of how marine species issues are deliberated on at CITES found numerous issues possibly resulting from the lack of marine management expert representation in national delegations, including concerns about inconsistent data presentation in proposals for new listings that lead to confusion, and at least one case of incorrect information about the extent of a species’ _decline included in a proposal.

 Conclusions 
This analysis of press coverage of commercially exploited marine species being considered for CITES listings revealed several possible causes for concern in terms of downstream public understanding of barriers to and strategies for achieving conservation of vulnerable marine species. It shows that members of the public learning about CITES from newspaper coverage would be exposed to a biased and limited sample of information providers, with NGOs overrepresented, offering simplified summaries of complex issues. Media coverage provides limited access to the important perspectives of UN agencies and academic experts. This information pathway is potentially open to abuse by partisan actors, potentially creating public pressure for non-optimal policy outcomes made by ill-informed decisionmakers pressured by an ill-informed citizenry. Consumers of these media articles would likely be uninformed about the specific details of what a CITES listing means and does not mean, which may influence their preferences for necessary follow-up policies including those which consider livelihoods. Oversimplified, emotionally charged coverage may result in policy outcomes not supported by experts and evidence, which potentially leads to inefficient or ineffective use of limited conservation capacity and resources.

The 3 fisherman and the high level public officer /  by Francisco Blaha

I have been working in fisheries consulting for 22 years now, easy must have done over 200 contracts of all sorts and sizes of which 100 must have been as a part of a team 2-3 to 10 people. In most, I was the only one with commercial fishing experience, perhaps in 10 of them there where one more person with fishing experience… but never until today I been part of the team that won a bid where there are 3 ex-fisherman and one high level public officer.

appropriate tuvaluan art

It seemed really strange to me when I started consulting, that you could work in fisheries projects without having been a fisherman at some stage in your life. Yet I’m fully aware that most fishers don't have the opportunity to do university qualifications and also that good writing count in this job. Is part of the deal that could have 40 years experience finding and catching tuna, but perhaps not even high school, so you ain’t going to get win a job in the fisheries development against someone with a PhD in tropical fisheries from Northern European country or the US for example.

Anyway… I’m very happy to have landed on deck a contract with the Tuvalu Fisheries Authority (one of my favourite countries in the world). When I saw the opportunity my head went into gear as to get a team for it…but I wanted to work with realistic and operational people that I respect. 

So I reached to my long term friend Robert Lee a former Skipper from Trinidad&Tobago and a fellow FAO officer with whom we worked a few times already (in Kiribati and recently on this plastic waste study). Robert has tons of experience everywhere, he know his stuff left, right and centre, has a good sense of humour and anyone that knows him will tell you is a good man. 

The other fisherman is Brett (Blue) Haywood, a former NZ fisherman himself and the head of an actual tuna fishing and processing company Sea Quest Fiji Ltd (that is sleepy with covid). Blue has been in Fiji for almost 20 years now and is one of the most progressive and positive people I worked with over the years (got AIS and the 1st blockchain traceability system in this part of the world)… One thing is to be a fisherman and another one is to be good at running a fishing company, he is one of the few I know who has managed that transition well… yet more importantly for me, he is a good man (when friends got stuck in Fiji at the beginning of the covid debacle, he opened his house at no cost for them, just because they were my friends… in my books that stuff has no price, and I will always be thankful to him for that)

Then is Taukelina Finikaso, whom I had only meet briefly before, and to be honest when you look at his CV your jaw drops. Former attorney general, former parliamentarian, former ambassador, former minister… as most Tuvaluan I worked with, extremely well prepared yet very approachable and with a good sense of humour… unbeatable combination.

In my experience, working with good people counts more and more for me as I get older, the other thing I really liked is that we all earn the same daily fee… that was very important for me and I’m stoked that we all are at the same level.

The job is a challenging one since it has been tried in many places before and didn't always work… is to set a course for the development of a viable and sustainable domestic tuna longline fishery operating in Tuvalu’s EEZ, with focus on providing analyses and recommendations on the operational sustainability of appropriately sized longline vessels but also the potential for the usage of regional ports since Tuvalu’s own is not really set up for maintenance, operational and freight logistics just to name few. 

So yeah that is the challenge… which to me sound like a job for 3 fisherman and a high-level public officer.

a pity is a desktop job… i love going to work in Tuvalu

RIP Professor William Ross Edeson /  by Francisco Blaha

With sadness I just got to know that Bill Edson passed away.

He was one of those larger than life characters that had a spoon in sooo many plates when it came to fisheries law and the development of the fisheries legal framework in many countries around the world, but specially in the pacific.

I worked a few times with him, but I remember well the first one in Vanuatu many years ago. I was initially quite intimidated (based on my usual “impostor syndrome” feeling), but he was great, and seemed genuinely interested in my practical experience, needles to say i learned a lot working with him then. Over the years we corresponded often consulting on each others strengths.

I really appreciated he had time for me… FFA did a nice eulogy on him here

Bill told me he liked this picture a lot, hope his departure was as peaceful as this image

Bill told me he liked this picture a lot, hope his departure was as peaceful as this image

Fuel consumption of free-swimming school vs FAD in tropical tuna purse seiners /  by Francisco Blaha

My 1st skipper used to laconically have a standard answer to my almost constant questions about pretty much anything: “todo tiene ventajas y desventajas”… (everything has advantages and disadvantages), which coincidentally was my dad’s advice when I told him I was getting married over 20 years ago.

Fishing by screen and numbers

Fishing by screen and numbers

For fisheries and life… that has been a real mantra over the years, and I always find it interesting when science papers prove that knowledge that my skipper (who only had primary school yet knew more about fishing than most people I meet since then)

I like that duality concept, in these days where everyone wants a “silver” bullet that will fix all problems and that is never the case.

Now this paper (Fuel consumption of free-swimming school versus FAD strategies in tropical tuna purse seine fishing) from the very clever crew at AZTI,  has also a finding that goes against the established belief yet fits with my observations… one of the cards pushed by eFAD proponent is the fuel savings… yet from working with PS and checking them for years now: Purse seiners while fishing on eFADs are always on the go from eFAD to eFAD and particularly at night where they go hard to the distant ones to start the set before sunrise, while free school fishing ones (like during our FAD closure) may move more during the day, but normally turn of main engines and drift during night, as you cannot see the tuna schools breaching (unless is an amazing full moon with no clouds – happen only once to me), and in the tropics, nights are long.

So I never really bought that argument completely, and this paper proves it… yet on the other hand, FAD fishing logically presents a higher set success rate than free school (but smaller than I expected based on my WCPO experience)… However, these are very well equipped and cleverly skippered Spanish boats in the Indian Ocean. Would love to see the same paper done here in the WCPO 

Anyway… Interesting read… go for the original (free!) I quote the Abstract and Conclusions below

Abstract
Different fishing strategies have been adopted in the last decades by tropical tuna purse seiners fleet, including fish aggregating device (FAD) and free-swimming school (FSC) fishing strategies, which has raised issues about the different carbon footprint of those fishing modes. Here we show the activity and energy patterns of a Spanish tuna purse seiner operating in the tropical Indian Ocean, based on the monitoring of energy consumption over 10 consecutive fishing trips; and we also assess the fuel use intensity of FAD versus FSC fishing by analysing 14 further trips of different tropical tuna purse seiners. The average time of a fishing trip lasted 33.1 ± 11 days. The dominant activity during the fishing trip was cruising (with 68.5% of the time), followed by inactive period at sea (15.6%), fishing (7.7%), and in port (8.1%). The vessel consumed 381 ± 113 t fuel/trip, of which 90.4% was spent in cruising, 4.3% in fishing, 3.7% during the inactive period at night and 1.6% while staying in port. The main engine consumed 75% of the total fuel, while the auxiliary engines the remaining 25%. Furthermore, our results demonstrated that FAD fishing (543.6 L/t) is more fuel intensive, than FSC fishing (439.4 L/t). However, FADs fishing successful rates are higher, around 95.7 ± 3.8%, than FSC rates (around 80.6% ± 5.8). It is worth noting that the differences may be driven by seasonality and FSC availability, number of FADs in an area, vessel characteristics and equipment, and skipper skills rather than the adopted fishing strategy. Nonetheless both FAD and FSC fishing are more energy efficient than longline (1069 L/t), trolling (1107 L/t), or pole and line (1490 L/t) fisheries for Atlantic tuna, but similar or slightly less efficient than Maldivian pole and liners.

Example of a trip with high dominance of FAD sets (left) and with FSC sets (right).

Example of a trip with high dominance of FAD sets (left) and with FSC sets (right).

Conclusions
Tuna purse seiners are one of the most fuel intensive fishing fleet operating in our oceans due to, among other things, their installed power, technology onboard, catch size, and distance covered (4759 ± 1870 nm/trip with FAD and 3696 ± 2083 nm with FSC strategy) and long duration of their fishing trips (33.1 days). In terms of duration a fishing trip lasts 33.1 days, of which 68% of a trip is dedicated to cruising, 8% fishing, 16% of the time the vessel is inactive and adrift at sea, and the remaining 8% the vessel is in port. A total of 381 tonnes of fuel are consumed on average in a fishing trip, of which 90% is due to cruising, 4% to fishing, 4% to the inactive period at sea mainly at night, and 2% to stays in port. The main engine consumes the 75% of the total fuel consumption of a trip, while the 25% is used by the auxiliary engines.

Different fishing strategies can be adopted by the purse seiners (i.e., FAD o FSC), each presenting different characteristics. FSC appear to be less energy intensive than FAD (in terms of L/t). However, FADs present higher set success rates, meaning that there are technically more efficient. Both FAD and FSC are less energy intensive (in terms of L/t) that other tuna fishing gears such as longline and trolling. Comparing energy efficiency in terms of IMO’s EEOI index, tropical tuna purse seiners are on average less energy efficient in comparison to different ship types, and their scores can be comparable with those of average road transportation, highlighting their inefficiency. But the good scores found in some of the FAD trips, which were similar to those of RoRo vessels, suggest that FAD fishing can present much improved EEOI values than FSC, for which this value is quite constant and high. Further studies are necessary to compare the energy efficiency of FSC and FAD fishing under different seasons and oceans.

Are all transhipments created equal? /  by Francisco Blaha

Continuing with my last two blogs on the FAO guidelines on transhipments and the logistics of containerisation, I want to tackle something that does annoys me a bit , and is the perception that all transhipment are the same and they are all bad… and as usual when it comes to fisheries… one size does not fit all.  

Hi I’m a transhipment in port, and i’m not a problem

Hi I’m a transhipment in port, and i’m not a problem

Transshipment is a legitimate practice in the tuna fishing industry. In a typical transshipment operation, a refrigerated carrier vessel collects catch from multiple fishing boats and carries it back to port. This practice enables fishing vessels to continue fishing, which reduces fuel costs for fishing vessels and gets the catch to port quicker. 

Tuna fishing in the central and western Pacific Ocean is regulated by both the countries in the region and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). 

The WCPFC seeks to ensure, through effective management, the long-term conservation and sustainable use of highly migratory fish stocks. The Commission develops conservation and management measures that are binding on vessels that fish in the region. These are enforced in various ways, including by on-board observers, electronic vessel monitoring systems, at-sea boarding and inspection, and aerial surveillance.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention defines transhipment as “the unloading of all or any of the fish onboard a fishing vessel to another fishing vessel either at sea or in port.” In recent years, around 80% of purse seine product and 22% of longline product harvested in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention Area has been transhipped on or near the fishing grounds 

There are two main types of tuna transshipment in this part of the world.  

Transhipment in or near a port, this does not mean that the vessels have to be tied up to wharf, in fact it happens mostly in the lagoons and protected areas of the port.

For us, this happens under the authorization, control, and inspection of the country where the port is located. In most Pacific Island countries the staff of the fisheries department monitor the volumes and species composition of the catch being transferred. 

In fact, and based on my work outside the region, we apply more controls to transhipment in port than many other countries apply to their landings. Transhipment in port is the bulk of operations for the Purse Seine (PS) fleet that is by far the biggest fleet in terms of volumes catch. All PS fleet in the region has to tranship in port, and as part of the FFA surveillance mechanisms we make sure that that is the case.

And in these transhipments Port State rules are the king, therefore control is much more accessible, in fact most port states in the region are in the same unit (via FFA/PNA) with the coastal states where the fish was caught.

L1080199.jpg

The other form of transshipment in the region (which is far more problematic) is transhipments at sea, which come in two modalities:

Transhipment in the EEZ of coastal countries:  this only happens thankfully for a couple of very defined smaller fleets in a couple of countries in our region where the vessels tranship in the nationals water near the fishing grounds to carries that bring the fish back to port in the same country. This type of transhipment allow the fleet to operate more efficiently and does not compromise compliance as the coastal state knows the vessels, their operations, and the fish come back to the ports of those states where it can be accounted.

In these cases coastal state rules, and this is fundamental here

Then is high seas transhipment, which is VERY problematic- it occurs in ocean areas beyond the exclusive economic zone of any country.  In those areas the authorization and controls over the transhipments are the responsibility of the flag States of the concerned carrier vessel and fishing vessel. This type of transshipment is particularly common for longline vessels and I have written lots about it, this link will take you to plenty of explanations

And while WCPFC recognices that transshipment on the high seas could cause problems, the international agreement that established the WCPFC states: “In order to support efforts to ensure accurate reporting of catches, the members of the Commission shall encourage their fishing vessels, to the extent practicable, to conduct transshipment in port.” Recognizing this point, the Commission made a rule in 2009 stipulating there shall be no transshipment on the high seas except where a member country has determined that it is impractical for a vessel – but the Commission did not define “impractical”, thereby creating a loophole.  

As said, in these transhipments flag states rule, yet unfortunately, there are lots of doubts on how much they actually do. 

The “rule” that " there shall be no transhipment on the high seas" is compromised by the loophole that allows unscrupulous DWFNs to assert that it is "impracticable" for certain vessels to comply. We've argued for years about how to define "impracticable", and we are still nowhere close to it. Yes, we have now a Transhipment Intercessional Working Group at the WCPFC, yet its pace seems to be defined on geological timelines more than biological ones.

 All reported high seas transhipments were conducted by fishing vessels registered to just 4 countries and one fishing entity that NZ has different levels of engagement, vessels of China, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Korea, and Vanuatu accounted for almost 90% of those transhipments, with Japan for the rest. As 22 of the 24 registered longline vessels flagged by Vanuatu are owned by individuals or companies in China and Chinese Taipei, it may be possible to attribute an even greater portion of high seas transhipments to those two operators

(In what is perhaps the only area I’ve seen where the “one China policy” actually works CN and TW work in perfect unison in this one)

The “good” news is that it seems to be a slight decrease in the numbers of transhipments reported this year…. But considering that there are no observers out there…. I’m highly dubious of the accuracy of that number. It would very convenient to show a reduction after we (PEW and others have been hammering on this for years) shown that transshipments have increased over 160% from 544 operations in 2014 to 1472 in 2019. 

 HS transhipments have become the norm not the exception for those DWFN, and that is the opposite that the WCPFC CMM indicates.

 So the way forwards is to keep working on reforming such operations. There appear to be two possibilities for this:

  • Ban transshipment on the high seas and require any transshipment to take place in a port where it can be easily monitored; or

  • Greatly improve the monitoring of high seas transshipment.

 The first possibility would certainly result in improved accountability and transparency of the tuna catches… yet every time we try it is opposed by the transshipping vessels flag state. 

The second possibility for reforming high seas transshipment would be to have the observers onboard the carrier vessels produce detailed reports and have those reports sent in a timely manner directly to the Commission for analysis. This possibility is likely to meet less opposition than simply banning high seas transshipment and forcing a major change in the way vessels to operate.  

So in conclusion: are all transhipment created equal?  No!