Navigating Responsibility for Human Rights Compliance in the Fishing Industry

As is well known, I have a lifelong particular interest in labour rights in fisheries; this recent little interview by SPC tells a bit of the story… I came to the Pacific as a migrant fisherman, yet I was very lucky to have a postgraduate fishery qualification, and I’m partly of European ancestry, so the road was much easier for me than for most of my colleages.

Much of this interest consolidated during my time as a Rhodes Ocean Scholar. I learned a lot… and met some really clever young people, like Julia Cirne Lima Weston, who wrote this very informative paper with Ingrid Kelling (with whom I also collaborated in the past).

Personally, I will recommend this paper to people who are interested and relatively new to the topic, and in particular, to those tempted to buy the lie that private labour certifications are relentingly pushed into the industry.

I also like that, without being a lawyer, I did not read anything in this scholarly paper that was not aligned with what I wrote in the fisheries chapter I was commissioned to write for the forthcoming Oxford University Manual of Human Rights at Sea, which is reassuring. In addition, I felt very proud that they quoted seven times the paper I co-wrote with Katrina Nakamura and Yosi Ota in 2022.

As usual, I suggest reading the original… in the meantime, I quote the parts I liked the most (because I think the same!)

Abstract

The surge in visibility of human rights abuses within the seafood supply chain has propelled scrutiny into the sustainability of global fisheries, leading to heightened interest in the social performance of seafood companies and questioning the obligations of States in upholding human rights under international law. This review aims to bring clarity on where responsibility for ensuring compliance with human rights law lies within the context of the fishing industry. It provides a comprehensive analysis of international legal provisions related to the human rights of fishers, derived from both treaty law and State practice. To effectively address human rights and labor abuses, a transformative approach that prioritizes the wellbeing of workers over profit is needed, involving the implementation of participatory strategies, empowering workers and the cultivation of shared responsibility. Despite the proactive role played by the private sector in developing global standards, the review uncovers inherent limitations in relying solely on certifications for comprehensive human rights protection. The study concludes that international human right law unequivocally applies to fishers, with States primarily responsible for enforcement. As enforcement remains a challenge in the maritime context, particularly on the high seas, the burden for solutions should rest on a collaborative effort within the international arena to ensure a sustainable and ethical future for global seafood.

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The analysis concludes that: i) international human rights law is applicable to fishers and their work; ii) enforcement of these rights is the responsi­bility of States in accordance with international law; iii) businesses bear responsibility for safeguarding human and labor rights in the workplace. The review concludes by calling on States, as the entities respon­sible for enforcement, to effectively uphold human rights.

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International human rights law treaties contain civil, political, social, cultural and economic rights. These include universal human rights such as the right to life, liberty, security, as well as property, remedy, work (including occupational health and safety and social security), freedom of association and freedom from forced and child labor. The essence of these rights is contained within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (United Nations 1948), as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), all with nearly universal ratification.

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The UDHR sets out the fundamental rights that apply universally to all individuals (United Nations General Assembly 2012), at sea as on land (Human Rights at Sea 2022) and therefore equally applying to fishers, whether onboard vessels or within coastal state jurisdiction (Papanicolopulu 2018). (btw… she is one of the editors of the Oxford University Handbook for Human Rights at Sea, I wrote the fisheries chapter)

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The Law of the Sea is shaped by the “freedom of the high seas,” a long-standing principle that remains today (Churchill and Lowe 1999), which emphasizes the exclusive jurisdiction of flag States in the high seas and concurrent jurisdiction in other maritime zones (Gavouneli 2007). Ultimately, this means that flag States bear the primary responsibility for uphold­ing the rule of law at sea and for ensuring that vessels flying their flag adhere to international law (Evans 2018). Despite this, flag State enforcement alone has proven inadequate in addressing shortcomings (Gavouneli 2007), leading to persistent human rights abuses aboard fishing vessels (Nakamura et al. 2022).

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Despite this trend, there are significant issues with relying on seafood certifications for human rights protection. Fisheries standards and certifications presently fall short of meeting the three fundamental principles of the UNGP: support for human rights policy, human rights due diligence, and access to remedy (Decker Sparks et al. 2022). This shows that fisheries standards and certifications are not able to ensure that human and labor rights are respected in a man­ner consistent even with the UNGP, a minimum benchmark (Decker Sparks et al. 2022).

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In essence, to achieve substantive outcomes, international treaties must be ratified and subsequently implemented and enforced through national laws, all while private state actors conscientiously uphold the human rights of fishers.

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In conclusion, this review underscores the indispensable role of international law, proper implementation and enforcement through national laws, and the conscientious commitment of private and state sectors in upholding the human rights of fishers. To navigate the complexities of the seafood industry, the call is clear: a holistic and collaborative effort for meaningful and comprehensive human rights protection is the only way to ensure a sustainable and ethical future for global seafood.

Marshall Islands Ratifies Agreement on PSMA

I was asked to write a press release on this decision, which has been a long coming. But as Beau, our Chief fisheries officer, says in the text: MIMRA's capacity was progressively developed under the guiding principle "act first, formalise later." This strategy facilitated the establishment of critical systems and procedures that were required not only to fulfil but exceed the requirements of the agreement. “

MIMRA Fisheries Officer preparing to board a carrier as part of its 100% inspection PSM  target

So here is the release

The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has taken a significant step in the fight against illegal fishing by ratifying the FAO Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing. The Nitijela, the legislative body of the RMI, passed Resolution No: 13 on April 12, 2024, approving the ratification. 

The Agreement on Port State Measures, the PSMA, is the first binding international agreement specifically targeting IUU fishing.  Its objective is to prevent, deter, and eliminate IUU fishing by preventing vessels engaged in such activities from using ports and landing their catches. By doing so, the PSMA reduces the incentive for these vessels to continue operating and blocks the entry of fishery products derived from IUU fishing into national and international markets. 

Majuro is the most important tuna transhipment port in the world. As such, the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority (MIMRA), supported by New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (NZ MFAT), has been actively implementing Port State Measures (PSM) best practices since 2018, as a direct result, in 2023, the International MCS Network Organization presented MIMRA with the “Stop IUU Fishing Meritorious Achievement Award”. A complete description of its PSM system is available at MIMRA’s website www.rmimimra.com/index.php/port-entry.

“MIMRA's capacity was progressively developed under the guiding principle "act first, formalise later." This strategy facilitated the establishment of critical systems and procedures that were required not only to fulfil but exceed the requirements of the agreement. “– Beau Bigler, Chief Fisheries Officer - Oceanic Division

RMI intends to combat IUU fishing through its own IUU-Free Pacific project, which aims to eradicate IUU fishing from the Pacific by 2023. RMI's accession to the FAO PSMA further demonstrates its commitment and regional leadership in fully implementing measures to combat IUU fishing in the WCPO. 

The practical implementation of the PSMA will contribute to the long-term conservation and sustainable use of living marine resources and marine ecosystems. It will also strengthen the RMI's efforts to protect its fisheries and ensure its marine resources' economic and environmental sustainability.

The ratification process, as outlined in Article 26 of the PSMA, requires the signatories to deposit their ratification, acceptance, or approval instruments with the Depositary at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome, Italy.  ​

The Republic of the Marshall Islands urges other nations to ratify and implement the PSMA and fight IUU fishing. Together, with strength through cooperation, we can safeguard our oceans and ensure the future of our marine ecosystems.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Absalom Edwards  MIMRA abedwards@mimra.com  

CC in Fisheries Series #4: Basics of climate change in the Western and Central Pacific

Continuing with my Climate Change in Fisheries Series (CCFS), here is my 4th on the Basics of climate change in the WCPO .

Richard Matear from CSIRO presented the basics of climate change. He is the Climate Intelligence Portfolio Leader at CSIRO’s Decadal Climate Forecasting Project in Australia. His presentation focused on differentiating between climate variability and climate change and introduced anthropogenic factors causing environmental changes associated with climate change.

The presentation emphasised the role of oceans in the climate system. The oceans absorb most (90%) of the anthropogenic heating and will be the ultimate repository for about 80% of our anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Unfortunately, the ocean uptake of carbon dioxide is slow (1,000s of years) in preventing climate change. Thus, it is important to manage greenhouse gases actively to achieve global climate change goals. The world is making positive steps to reduce emissions, but these need to be accelerated.

The climate has changed in the Pacific over the last 70 years (e.g., the surface has warmed), but separating anthropogenic climate change from natural variability is challenging because the region has large interannual (e.g. ENSO) and decadal variability that have large impacts on the climate and the weather.

The future climate will continue to change as the earth warms. Climate change occurs at the global, regional and local scale, and there is a need to understand the local impacts. The impacts of climate change, such as on fisheries, are also both chronic and acute.

Climate change may alter the climate, amplify the ENSO cycle and alter the frequency and magnitude of extreme climate events. For example, as the region warms, one expects increased frequency and severity of heat waves (land and marine); coral bleaching, which will damage plants and other organisms which will have cascading impacts on ecosystems (e.g. loss of seagrass due to warmer water reducing key habitat for the juvenile fish altering the fish biomass and diversity of a region). Corals are starting to inhabit areas that were previously not suitable habitat due to high temperatures shifting poleward, suggesting a grim future for coral reefs in the tropics if global warming continues. The compound risks, such as stressing organisms and removing important species, could lead to the prevalence of invasive species.

The consequences of climate change may have unforeseen consequences. For example, there was a massive mortality event of snow crabs in the North Pacific because the warming water increased their metabolism faster than their ability to eat enough food and they died of starvation.

The importance of considering complex risks and how they can amplify the consequences of climate change was noted. The impacts of climate change are not confined to local areas, as events such as sea level rise can lead to global migration. Local information is important in understanding the impacts of climate change, and developing a project on ocean certification would be useful.

Increasing the number of monitoring stations in a region could provide valuable insights, improve the accuracy of models and reduce uncertainty. The complexity of climate and weather systems and the need for quantitative measures to understand and predict changes was stressed.

The relationship between climate change and tropical cyclones is difficult to predict due to their infrequent occurrence. There may be a decrease in the frequency of tropical cyclones, but an increase in intensity due to the higher heat in the atmosphere.

Discussion

The risks of how things compound as the climate changes was discussed. It is relatively common to oscillate between rain, drought and fires. As an example, climate change can cause droughts resulting in the die off of vegetation, which can result in increased fires, this can be followed by heavy rain, which then causes flooding and washes the soil away as there were no plants to hold it in place.

These extreme impacts can result in compounded effects in sequential seasons or years. In addition, when you push a system and damage it, other organisms will take over so impacts like coral bleaching can cause a proliferation of unwanted species that can cause additional damage to the system.

Ocean acidification information is generated from a limited network, but these data are important. Big CO2 oscillations can occur in a short period of time and vary locally, so local data collection is critical, and data from many local areas around the Pacific is required.

Climate scientists use an ensemble of models, and both the observation of the event and the observations of the parameters are required to improve the models. Both are equally important to evaluating the impact of climate change and its consequences. Cyclones, for example, are difficult to predict. There seems to be a link between ENSO and cyclones.

However, the numbers are small, and developing models based on a few observations is challenging to resolve and more observations are needed. There may be fewer but larger cyclones as the atmosphere warms.

El Niño impacted the 2023 record temperatures and sea surface temperature trends at the equator. Analysis of the event showed that the heat gradient from east to west was steeper than expected, which is inconsistent with the model predictions. It is important to understand these physical changes and how they may alter future current flows and other physical ocean characteristics.

The FFA Regional PSM Risk Assessment Training in Majuro

This week here at MIMRA (Marshall Islands Marime Resources Authorithy) we will be hosting the FFA Regional PSM Risk Assessment Training (8th to 12th April 2024).

This training aims to establish a common understanding of the critical elements of PSM Risk Assessment and Analysis, determine the level of risk associated with vessels, and inform FFA members on the regional risk assessment criteria incorporated into the regional e-PSM system, which was developed using as a model the system we have been working on here in MIMRA six years ago.

During the training, participants will be able to understand the different roles of actors in conducting PSM activities in ports using Risk Assessment Criteria. They will also discuss the types of information that inform risk assessment in the region and the available tools that can provide this information to support risk assessment.

Our boss Glen Joseph oppening the training

The expected outcomes of the training include establishing a common understanding of PSM Risk Assessment and Analysis among all of us yet for the realities of each of our ports, understanding the regional risk assessment criteria incorporated into the regional e-PSM system, and using these criteria to support developing and implementing national risk assessment criteria for incoming vessels based on their realities.

The training program will consist of various agenda items, including presentations, practical exercises, and group discussions.

The participants will have the chance to learn from MIMRA Operations how to conduct risk assessments while visiting the MIMRA Surveillance Centre. They will also participate in a practical exercise onboard a fishing vessel to observe the methodology and use of remote-reading electronic hook scales for transhipment monitoring developed by the MIMRA Port State Measures team.

The training will conclude with a debrief of the operational exercise, national-level risk analysis and assessment challenges discussions, and an outcome and way forward session.

We look forward to this week, as we are very proud of our award-winning systems.

Is FAD fishing an economic trap?

Is FAD fishing an economic trap?

 I have a small break on climate change in tuna Pacific fisheries blogs to touch on another of my (too many?) interests: FAD fishing (something that fascinates me as it radically changed the way and the economics of how we fish tuna during the 30 years I have been in it – I’ve written lots about it)

The title of this post comes from a paper co-written by my friend and fellow dub-head Alex Tidd, who always seems to be doing cool research. The full name of the paper states: Is FAD fishing an economic trap? Effects of seasonal closures and other management measures on a purse-seine tuna fleet. The study focuses on the IOTC, a very different (and smaller) beast than our WCPFC… yet I would love to see this work done here.

This figure definitively represents the full extent of their approach to the question.

Three-step modelling approach. signs + and – indicate the expected causal effect of variables; FE, Fixed-effect models; GAM, General Additive Model; RF, Random Forest; GBM, Gradient Boosting Model.

And as usual, I recommend you read the original (or ask me to send it to you). I just quoted below the abstract and the key parts I find interesting.

Abstract

The management of fish aggregating devices (FAD) creates heated debates in tuna fishery management organizations striving to reduce the number of deployed floating objects. Through several econometric models and a machine learning approach, we evaluate the consequences of three management scenarios on the catch and profit of the French purse-seine fleet operating in the Indian Ocean:

(1) a half reduction in the number of authorized buoys per vessel, (2) a 72-day closure of FAD fishing with and (3) without re-allocation of effort on free schools.

The results show a significant decrease in fleet profits by 7%, 10% and 18%, respectively. We hypothesize an “economic trap” of FAD fishing caused by the far greater efficiency of this harvesting technique for larger vessels searching for economies of scale, and by the overfished status and catch limitation of yellowfin (Thunnus albacares) and bigeye (Thunnus obesus) tunas in the Indian Ocean. The results are compared with other studies looking at the impact of FAD management measures in other oceans.

I really liked the section on the history of the evolution of FADS (Technical change and strategic efficiency of FADs) and the last paragraph summarises why they are so ubiquitous.

The use of echo-sounders has enhanced FAD efficiency by 10%, i.e., +2.0 to 2.5 tonnes per successful set, according to Wain et al. (2021). Considering the unit cost of an echo-sounder buoy is around US$ 1000–1500, with each buoy being used three or four times on average, the net revenue gain would represent between US$ 5000 and 7000 per buoy (Ibid.). The return on investment was even estimated at USD 35,000 for a USD 5200 unit cost in just one set (Gomez et al., 2020). (under script is mine)

Conclusions

"This study evaluates the consequences of several FAD management measures on the economic performance of the French PS fleet in the Indian Ocean. It suggests that there is an economic trap of FAD fishing because of far greater efficiency compared to free school sets and because of binding constraints coming from other conservation measures such as the TAC on yellowfin tuna. On the basis of fixed-effect models and a machine-learning approach (random forest and gradient boosting models), we first demonstrated the relationship between the aggregate number of deployed buoys and the increasing FAD fishing strategy. The main outcome lies in a greater proportion of skipjack and small tuna caught by PS vessels. Despite lower unit prices, fishing smaller tunas on FADs is rewarded with the greater efficiency and higher profits.

We built three scenarios of possible FAD management measures in the Indian Ocean: a half reduction in the number of authorized buoys for the fleet with no YFT quota limitation, a yearly 72-day FAD fishing ban with re-allocation of effort on free schools and without such effort transfer, the vessels staying at port during 2.5 months every year. The incurred profit loss would be −7.1%, −9.7% and −18.2% respectively. The economic consequences could also be detrimental to coastal states relying on tuna landings (e.g. the Seychelles and Mauritius economies may be heavily affected). Despite the consensus about the excessive use of FADs, more scientific knowledge is required to support the RFMO decision-making process before implementing any stringent regulation that might produce economic damage for both distant fleets and coastal states.

Some authors suggested to replace FAD closures by FAD set limits, which could effectively reduce the fishing effort on FADs and avoid unintended consequences for other species and for some tuna fishery-dependent economies.

I personally agree with the idea of FAD set limits… yet as usual… the issue of enforcement is fundamental as there is a whole underground economy of FAD data and horse-trading among skippers and owners of access to FADs position and volume of fish underneath by trading the access code of particular FAD, so whoever pays can see it f the owner is either fishing far or transhipping somewhere and suspect that the fish underneath may move to another one… remember we have anywhere in between 20000 to 40000 deployments every year (so I suspect more that 100000) floating around in the region.

PNA is giving FAD management a go by enforcing a PNA FAD Buoy Register. While there are technological challenges in terms of monitoring and control, the outcomes will help adjust the otimal management strategy.

Never a dull moment in tuna fisheries

CC in Fisheries Series #3: Exploring climate variability

Continuing with my Climate Change in Fisheries Series (CCFS), here is my 2nd on the Exploring Climate Variability Presented by Moleni Tu'uholoaki, from SPC.

I knew about him before, but I was very impressed by his skills and general “mana” while presenting very composedly and clearly. He also spoke about how CC is impacting Tongatapu, where he worked for almost 20 years.

He started by defining climate variability, which are natural fluctuations in climate patterns, as well as providing an understanding of short-term variations and their impacts on weather patterns.

The presentation covered various topics related to climate change and its impacts. It emphasised the importance of understanding climate variability and its effects on weather patterns. The topic of climate variability in the Pacific was explored, focusing on the impact of large-scale climate drivers. The discussion covered the West Pacific, the role of warm water and wind, and the Southern Hemisphere's atmospheric and oceanic systems.

He has analysed rainfall patterns in the Pacific, tropical cyclones' formation, and climate change's potential impacts. He mentioned ongoing research and the need for extensive data to differentiate between climate change and natural variability.

This talk explored major climate variabilities in the Pacific. It discussed the distinction between weather, climate, and climate variability, including various factors influencing the climate, particularly large-scale climate drivers, which were responsible for large-scale variations in rainfall, temperature, and sea level distributions at a scale of weeks, months, years, or several years and even decades in the Pacific.

The key drivers of climate variabilities in the Pacific, such as the Western Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP) Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), Trade Winds, the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) were discussed. This included their variations due to movements and intensity that impact weather patterns in the Pacific.

A reference to changes in winds, temperature, tropical cyclone genesis and sea level with different phases of ENSO in Tonga is presented to highlight the need to redefine ENSO at the local scale. There was also a discussion on an unusual variation of sea surface temperature anomalies and the position of the SPCZ in January 2024. This resulted in the highest monthly rainfall ever recorded in Tongatapu, which is uncharacteristic during El Niño events.

Discussion

Local impacts on different islands during ENSO changes were discussed. In Tonga, during the recent El Niño, the ocean was unexpectedly cool. This is due to the wind driven upwelling locally, resulting in Tongan local conditions being different from the overall general predictions. As a result, while you can have broader subgroupings of areas, island-specific information will likely show that each country will be different and will need to be investigated separately.

The SPCZ moves south in La Ninia events, but the most recent event seemed to have been the most extreme. It was highlighted that seasonal variability can mask the changes of climate change as such when evaluating the scale of climate change the long-term effects need to be assessed in order to overcome the interannual and seasonal fluctuations. But more local long-term records will help elucidate what these impacts may be for local communities.

Lastly, it was highlighted that the concepts of ENSO are challenging to convey to the public, and it is difficult to get the correct messages across. It considered that the best way to convey these messages was in terms of impact, as that is something that people can relate to.

CC in Fisheries Series: #2 Introduction to IPCC Scenarios

Continuing with my Climate Change in Fisheries Series (CCFS), here is my 2nd on the Introduction to IPCC Scenarios by Dr Elizabeth Holland

I met Elizabeth at my friend Bob Gillet's house in Lami (near Suva) quite a few years ago. While she was the head of the Climate Change programme at USP, we went on the usual Sunday morning cycling mission to the Pacific Harbour. She came over to join us, and we had a great chat. We have been acquaintances since then.

She is climate science royalty after over 30 years of climate change research experience in the Pacific. She is now a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategy, Resilience, & Security at University College London (UCL); she served as an author in all six cycles of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, including the recent Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Holland won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as part of the IPCC, and has been honoured as a Leopold Fellow, Bjerknes Fellow at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research at UiB, and Fellow of the American Associate of the Advancement of Sciences in Atmospheric and Hydrological Sciences.

She is like an aunty figure to many Pacific climate scientists, students, and communities working to build climate- and disaster-resilient futures. You hardly find anyone who is as caring yet qualified as she is, but most importantly, who is profoundly committed to CC science and activism. So much so that she had death threats and had a security attachment while working on the IPPC reports.

As I expected, her presentation was flawless from the technical side, but it was also really moving and a call to action. It was the 1st of these sobering moments I had that week. 

Her presentation clarified the role of the IPCC, including an overview of (Representative Concentration Pathways(RCPs), and explored how climate models predict future changes in temperature, currents, and ecosystems.

Her overview of the Sixth IPCC Assessment Cycle (AR6) included a series of Special Reports including the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) requested by Pacific leaders. The first IPCC Assessment report was released in 1992 and the most recent report was released in 2023. The IPCC is the authoritative voice summarising the state of the climate and projected impacts.

The ocean is the largest thermal sink for climate warming. The ocean has warmed to below 2 km deep, ocean pH has declined with resulting ocean acidification. Marine heatwaves are increasing in frequency and extent. Deoxygenation of the ocean, decreased pH, increased ocean acidification are all changing that state of the ocean. The top three Greenhouse Gases (GHG) are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O).

To understand the increase in GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, it is important to understand the global and local carbon cycles. The state of the carbon cycle was presented, covering emissions and the importance of sources and sinks in determining atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, the most important greenhouse gases involved in climate change.

The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios used in the AR6 project show a range of temperature increases from 1.5°C to more than 4°C of surface warming in our changing climate.

At the higher SSPs with increased GHG emissions and associated warming, the ocean is unable to continue to remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere thus increasing the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the higher SSPs.

The combined effects will further accelerate warming and thus further amplify the impacts including acceleration of sea level rise. Only the SSP1 scenarios, SSP1-1.5 and SSP1-2.6. ensure that Arctic ice sheets are protected throughout the year.

The SROCC, the AR6 reports, and the special reports highlight the need for urgent action to decrease GHG emissions. Sea level rise projections for 2300 increased to 5.4 m, with further increases possible for the high impact/low probability projections of sea level rise that include a more detailed presentation of ice loss.

At 1.5°C of warming, there is a high risk of losing 70 to 90% of global coral reefs and associated services for humankind, with even more loss at 2°C. The ongoing strong El Niño resulted in dramatic ocean warming, and the global mean temperature increase exceeded 1.5°C in June 2023.

Discussion

It was suggested that for a fisheries audience, IPCC could be considered similar to a fisheries management strategy evaluation, and we can use it to develop options for to explore how the world may work under alternative climate change forecasts.

There was a lack of information from the Pacific in early IPCC reports. As such it was felt that there is a need to focus more on the Pacific, and that Pacific-based climate scientists and managers should work harder to bring this information to the forefront of international discussions.

It was noted that capacity within the region is growing, and as an example, over the last few years, within the region, more than 200 postgraduate students have completed theses on climate-related work. In addition, some New Zealand universities, such as Canterbury, are doing more work using Pacific data, which gets 4this information into peer-reviewed journals. However, there is still a need for more information on local Pacific knowledge and local descended knowledge that needs to be elevated to the international community.

It was noted that climate scientists are concerned about the impact of climate change on the future of the planet's habitability. However, there is no official climate change doomsday clock to summarise the combined impacts of all climate-related issues. What we do know is that currently, we are running out of carbon budget, but there is no clear plan as to what to do when it is reached or exceeded. There is also no common agreement about which method to use to predict and capture carbon requirements in the future.

The lack of a single body regulating emissions was noted. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has no responsibility over bunker fuel or aviation fuel. Bunker fuel is regulated by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), and aviation fuel is regulated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Neither of these entities is responsible for any climate-regulated activities. This is problematic, and agreements on who takes the responsibility still need to be resolved and where the boundaries for that responsibility lie. For example, for an airline or shipping company, who pays for the carbon? Is it the purchaser, airline/shipping company, country of destination, or country of departure? Under the climate change convention, developed and developing countries also have different responsibilities. This concept is not in the IMO or ICAO.

As a country with a large fleet of ships, the Marshall Islands has started to do this voluntarily, but shipping companies are trying to avoid levies and resist changes. To clarify the scale of the situation, SPC is developing a system to house extended knowledge on bunker fuel and related issues.

Models for predicting the impacts of climate change are good and getting better as we get more information to feed into them. Some areas, such as the carbon budget and the impact of carbon, are well-refined, and the science community has a high degree of certainty in them. There are areas where improvement is needed, but the diverse community hinders some of these. Moreover, some of the models result from a negotiated outcome and, as such, are likely to be conservative. To make things more explicit and meaningful for non-experts, the IPCC should put statements into threshold groupings for clarity.

However her last slide is the one the hit me the most

Climate Change in Fisheries Series (CCFS): #1 Climate change terminology

Recently, I blogged about my sobering week at the excellent Fisheries Climate Awareness Workshop (CLAW), it was designed to enhance knowledge and awareness of SPC member countries and territories on climate issues and projected impacts on the industrial fisheries of the western and central Pacific.

SPC did a wonderful compilation of the event and put it on a website. As said I would blog progressively about the presentations that I found contributed more to my understanding (primarily as a way for me to consolidate what I learned), I would link to CLAW’s depository as I walk down the experience… so here is the 1st presentation we had: Climate change terminology

Espen Ronneberg from the SPC did the presentation (link to download). I had never met him before, and I was profoundly impressed. He spent a lot of time working with RMI, and we had that in common. The man knows his stuff, and he made quite a few presentations.

His presentation clarified essential terminology such as the greenhouse effect, carbon footprint, adaptation, and mitigation.

The presentation also clarified key concepts to establish a common understanding between participants. Overall, he noted that it is important for all sectors to be cognizant of the language used by other sectors and to enhance climate change literacy at all levels.

The terminology for climate change needs to be unpacked in terms that the broader public can understand. For example, the concept of a blanket of greenhouse gases can be quite effective when talking about warming, and the increased emissions contribute to the thickening of that blanket. This, in turn, increases the level of energy of the atmospheric system, leading to more extreme impacts of what is already observed from climate variability.

 During the discussion, it was noted that climate justice is not a term that was used in the presentation; rather, the terms loss and damage were referred to. Climate justice is used in fisheries in the Pacific. Climate justice was brought to the climate change discussions by civil society and it is used to highlight the injustice of the problem.

For example, Pacific Island Countries (PICTs) produce the fewest impacts globally but get the brunt of the damage from the impacts of climate change. However, the term climate justice has not been accepted internationally. Oil producers say that stopping oil production is an injustice for them, so they are unwilling to use that term. Some aspects, such as security around climate change, are acknowledged, and this may be more constructive terminology to use when engaging with polluters.

It was also noted that climate change and climate variability are defined on different scales. Climate change is a longer-term impact, and climate variability is more short-term, such as a switch in ENSO state, but both are caused by climate change. Variability has short-term impacts but the system usually can revert back to its original state, whereas climate change is longer-term and cannot be reversed.

The positive impacts of climate change tend to be highly localised from a global perspective. For example, you may increase rice production in a small local area, but globally rice production will decrease. As a result, the small positive local changes are overwhelmed by the global-scale negative changes.

Energy transition of fishing fleets

As I’m still digesting the lessons of the Pacific Climate Awareness Workshop (CLAW) a couple of weeks ago, I thought of this recent excellent publication by the good crew of UNCTAD, led by my friend and colleague David Vivas Eugui Energy transition of fishing fleets - Opportunities and challenges for developing countries.

is all fuel

I know David from his work on fisheries subsidies, an area of my strong interest… Fuel is the single most important operational cost across all fleets, subject to the largest fluctuations across all cost categories and, hence, a major determinant in the change in fishing costs over time. Fuel makes up an average of 30% of operational costs, with variability depending on the age and condition of the vessel in the longline fleet here in the Pacific, and such is the focus of most subsidies… while I see an inevitable decline in the Longline fishery as the money isn’t there, yet its geopolitical value is immense for the DWFN (if you have a presence, you have rights) and LL are relatively cheap to subsidise (since they pay crew shit and they bunker at sea paying under-market value fuels not subjected to taxes

The reality is that Climate change is really impacting Pacific fisheries… but how much do fishing vessels impact the climate? What is their emission profile?

I questioned this in the past when I heard recreational fishers bragging about their allegedly minor environmental impact… they seem to cherry-pick out emissions.

On a good weekend, you may have 1000 recreational fishing boats out in the Hauraki Gulf, and let’s have a conservative average of 100HP per boat, which is 100000 HP… a longliner may bring 3 to 4000kg of fish on 400HP, and only 4 of those 1000 may bring 40Kg; hence the emissions per kg of fish are off the charts.

The basis of the publications is very sound, and I strongly suggest you read it, if you are interested in the overall impact of fishing in comparison to other forms of primary production.

I quote here the Executive Summary.

As more countries commit to net-zero emissions and include ocean-based climate action in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), the energy transition of the fishing industry and its fleets is becoming a pressing issue. The fisheries sector is a contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because of its heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

In total, fishing vessels contribute between 0.1 per cent and 0.5 per cent of global carbon emissions, representing about 4 per cent of carbon emissions from global food production. Because of a lack of data, emissions from fishing fleets are estimated with different methods (bottom-up vs top-down). The International Maritime Organization (IMO) finds an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions using a bottom-up analysis, versus a decline using a top-down (or macro) approach. Academic studies estimate that the world’s fishing fleets emitted 179 million tons of CO2 in 2011 and 159 million tons in 2016.

Asia has the largest fishing fleet, producing the most CO2 emissions, followed by Europe and Africa. Based on notifications made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the European Union, Japan and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have reduced the emissions of their fishing fleets by between 20 and 45 per cent over the past 20 years due to a reduction in fleet sizes and energy efficiency gains (e.g., in fuel use, efficient engines, lighter fishing gear, and smart navigation and fishing methods).

The IMO recently adopted a revised GHG strategy for global shipping (IMO, 2023a) that seeks to reach net-zero GHG emissions from international shipping close to 2050 and a commitment to ensure an uptake of alternative zero and near-zero GHG fuels by 2030. While not specifically targeting fishing fleets, the revised IMO GHG strategy is likely to accelerate the deployment of low and zero emissions technologies and fuels, and their related infrastructure in the fisheries sector. Any strategy for energy transition in the fisheries sector should be coordinated and build on that of the shipping sector because regulatory and technological developments are in a more advanced stage in that ocean economic sector.

To date the application of energy efficiency regulations to fishing vessels has been effective but rather limited. This is primarily due to their size, propulsion type and operational patterns. Fishing vessels that fall below certain tonnage thresholds or operate exclusively within a flag State’s jurisdiction are exempt from energy efficiency measures, but some larger fishing vessels may need to comply in the near future. The energy transition of fishing vessels, and fisheries in general, lag behind the decarbonization of the shipping industry, lacking global targets and implementation guidelines and related research and development (R&D).

The fisheries sector plays a crucial role in food security and livelihoods,  with more than 40  million fishers worldwide, many of them located in developing countries. However, due to volatile fossil fuel prices and increasing climate impacts, there is a need for urgent support to ensure a swift energy transition for the fisheries sector, with special attention paid to small-scale and artisanal fishers and female fisheries workers.

With agriculture and tourism, the fisheries sector is one of the three economic sectors most vulnerable to climate change. The main causes for concern are rising sea levels, warmer water temperatures and ocean acidification – and their impacts on fishing activities – particularly in least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing States (SIDS). While non-motorized fishing vessels are emissions-free, artisanal fishers face fish stocks decline because of climate change. They need public support to adapt to climate change and improve their livelihood. On the other hand, motorized fishing vessels need support in shifting to renewable and clean energy resources. This applies especially to small-scale fishers.

Policies to incentivize or mandate the energy transition of the fishing fleet cannot be designed without considering trade-offs and co-benefits.  For example,  increasing the fuel efficiency of engines may not improve fuel efficiency in terms of litres of fuel per ton of catch if overfishing continues. Canada and Norway, for instance, have the most fuel-efficient fishing vessels, while the European Union and the United Kingdom have lower fuel-efficiency, largely due to more intense competition for catches.1 Similarly, industrial fishing fleets, which are more fuel-efficient, can undermine small-scale fishers if they are allowed to compete in the same marine areas or fish for overfished shared resources.

The review of NDCs conducted in this study shows surprising results. It reveals that three major aquatic food exporters show no commitments on the ocean or fisheries-related matters.  In contrast,  countries such as Canada, Chile and the Russian Federation have committed to protecting ocean space and include climate mitigation and adaptation measures within marine protected areas. And, despite being a part of the most polluting region in the world, China and  Viet Nam stand out for committing to implement measures for energy saving, energy efficiency and emission reduction in fisheries as a means of mitigating GHG emissions. The review of regulations and agreements found little evidence of such measures being used in the fisheries sector.

At the European Union level, regulatory initiatives have been introduced to address GHG emissions from maritime transport. The inclusion of shipping activities in the monitoring, reporting and verification of CO2  emissions from maritime transport (MRV) Regulation and the Emission Trading System (ETS) of the European  Union,  may have some implications for the fishing industry,  albeit indirectly.  While fishing vessels have been excluded from certain reporting obligations and market-based mechanisms, the European Union has recognized the importance of fair contributions across all sectors to achieve climate neutrality and Member States are required to take necessary measures, including at the national level, under the European Union Climate Law, which has been directly applicable and effective since July 2021. This suggests there is potential for the future inclusion of fishing vessels in emission reduction measures, as well as potential taxation of energy products used for propulsion.

When zooming in on the fisheries sector, certain forms of (fuel) subsidies clearly contribute to overfishing because they expand the capacity of fishing fleets. According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and  Development  (OECD),  China is the biggest provider of fishing subsidies in value, followed by the United States of America, Japan, Canada and the European Union. About 80 per cent of all fisheries subsidies, including fuel subsidies, are directed to industrial fleets. Most LDCs and SIDS do not provide, nor do they have the financial capacity to offer considerable subsidies, particularly for industrial fishing. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Fisheries Subsidies Agreement reached in 2022 prohibits certain fisheries subsidies that contribute to illegal fishing and fishing on overfished stocks and is a significant step towards phasing out fisheries subsidies. However, negotiations are still ongoing for additional provisions under a comprehensive agreement to address issues related to overcapacity and overfishing, including fossil fuel subsidies. Phasing out fuel subsidies and shifting resources to support the energy transition of small-scale fisheries are essential to address overfishing and GHG emissions.

This study finds several alternative energy sources for fishing vessels at different levels of commercial development, such as green methanol, liquified natural gas (LNG), biogas, green hydrogen and wind propulsion. Each option has its challenges and opportunities. Green biofuels, made from non-food feedstocks or fish waste, stand out as the most readily available and mature fuel option for fishing vessels. Green methanol and LNG give rise to challenges in terms of retrofitting, safety and limited potential to fully decarbonize. Green hydrogen and green ammonia show promise but require further R&D to address safety risks, scalability, cost-effectiveness, the storage capacity of vessels and ports, and delivery infrastructure. Onboard carbon capture only shows promise in the middle to long term. Ultimately, the choice of alternative fuels depends on the specific technical requirements and capabilities of fishing fleets, the crew and the type of fishing activity, as well as coordination and cooperation across the world to ensure access to alternative fuels wherever a fleet may operate.

Another approach involves utilizing electric engines and hybrid engines, which can be powered by renewable energy sources such as solar panels. These engines offer a clean and quiet energy option. Electric engines are particularly suitable for smaller fishing vessels and short trips close to shore. Hybrid engines, which combine batteries, fuel cells and traditional engines, offer greater autonomy and flexibility for longer trips. This study also explores emerging wind propulsion as an attractive and carbon-neutral option for vessel propulsion for fishing and tourism activities through innovative technologies.

Energy efficiency measures, such as digital tools and optimization methods, can be integrated into fishing vessels to enhance performance and reduce energy consumption. While on-board carbon capture could play a role in maritime decarbonization in the long term, the technology is not yet mature and faces high costs. Overall, technological alternatives such as alternative fuels, electric engines, hybrid engines, wind propulsion and energy efficiency measures, offer potential solutions to reduce GHG emissions in the fisheries sector and contribute to the just energy transition. However, each alternative presents challenges and limitations, requiring continuous R&D to fully realize their potential.

Four case studies from diverse regions at different levels of development and with uniquely sized fleets offer valuable insights and can be found in Annex 3. For instance, the Ecuadorian experience shows efforts to measure the carbon footprint and introduce carbon-neutral production in the tuna value chain. The Asia-Pacific region focuses on clean energy and emissions targets but faces challenges related to capacity building, financing and regional strategies. In Europe, alternative renewable energy sources are not yet available for fishing fleets at a commercial scale and the region is focused on reducing energy consumption, improving efficiency and introducing circular economy schemes. The fourth case study provides an example from the private sector to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040 through emissions reduction and compensation.

Accelerating the energy transition of fishing vessels will require collaboration and cooperation among stakeholders, governments, international organizations, research bodies and the private sector. Enabling coherent strategies, sharing technological advances and introducing financial incentives are essential to achieve a just energy transition for fishing fleets, particularly in developing countries and for small- scale fisheries. Additionally, further research on sustainable fisheries management and ecosystem-based approaches, and their links to energy transition, is needed.

The transition should focus on a balanced approach that encourages trade and investment in a sustainable energy mix and promotes the incremental adoption of renewable technologies that mitigate impacts on small-scale fisheries and marginalized fisherfolk. The following are some of the economic and technological, trade, environmental and social considerations that are proposed and developed in detail in the report.

1. Economic and technological considerations
Develop and implement comprehensive national mitigation and adaptation plans for the fisheries sector, prioritizing a just energy transition that involves all stakeholders along the entire fishing value chain and national energy matrix.

• Building on the experience of the IMO and FAO, establish a globally harmonized system for data collection, monitoring and reporting of fishing fleet emissions adapted to small-scale and artisanal fisheries.

• Explore and adopt sustainable fuel options from circular economy practices, such as transforming fish waste and seaweed into biofuel or biogas for fishing vessels. Such transition implies retrofitting or adopting new engines and vessel design, efficient fishing practices and adequate port infrastructure.

2. Trade, value chain decarbonization and trade-related infrastructure considerations

• Explore the need to develop specific Harmonized System codes for the latest renewable energy goods and related technologies.

• Incrementally phase out and ultimately prohibit fossil fuel-based subsidies to the fisheries sector.

• Incorporate carbon footprint criteria for fish and seafood products into voluntary standards or consumer seafood sustainability guides.

• Develop and implement effective measures on climate change adaptation, resilience building and disaster risk reduction (DRR) for seaport infrastructure on which fisheries activities depend; and improve access to affordable financing for developing countries.

3. Environmental considerations

• Develop and agree on a specific and measurable global emission reduction goal for fishing fleets and on effective regulatory measures that are applicable to fishing vessels.

• Include specific objectives for emission reduction and adaptation for the fisheries sector and fishing fleets in the revision and updates of NDCs and scale-up mitigation commitments (by major aquatic food traders and fishing nations).

• Bolster efforts to reduce fishing fleet emissions with effective stock and ecosystem management and restoration.

4. Social considerations

• Ensure that the shift towards renewable and sustainable energy sources promotes a just energy transition that also prioritizes the well-being, livelihoods and rights of fishers and their families.

• Revitalize the ratification and implementation process of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO’s) Work in Fishing Convention (C188) that ensures minimum working conditions, occupational safety and health and social security in the fisheries sector.

• Enhance fishing safety and prevent marine pollution by encouraging ratification of the IMO Cape Town Agreement and enforce the agreement to establish comprehensive safety standards for fishing vessels once it is in force.

EU’s forthcoming ban on products made with forced labour

A few weeks ago, when I presented the draft of the chapter on fisheries, I was commissioned for the forthcoming Oxford University Handbook on Human Rights at Sea, I wrote on the limited role that, so far, market states had on labour issues. I quote

happy to have a good contract

Markets States, on their side, have limited involvement at this stage, albeit the existence of a well-developed market access conditions framework. For instance, the European Union (EU) imposes market access requirements that depend on “official assurances” by the seafood safety and fisheries competent authorities of the processing and flag States of fishery products intending to access its market. These authorities must provide official certification regarding the food safety and legality of the catch for any product intended to be sold in the EU market. Unfortunately, the possibility of implementing a comparable method to ensure the enforcement of labour rights on board through the labour authority of the flag State has not been proposed.

While I woke up today to good news in these front from the EU, that paragraph still true.

A press release for the EU says that the Parliament and Council negotiators reached a provisional agreement on new rules that ban products made with forced labour from the EU market. 

The new regulation would create a framework for enforcing this ban through investigations, new IT solutions and cooperation with other authorities and countries.

Investigations

According to the agreed text, national authorities or, if third countries are involved, the EU Commission will investigate the suspected use of forced labour in companies’ supply chains. If the investigation concludes that forced labour has been used, the authorities can demand that relevant goods be withdrawn from the EU market and online marketplaces and confiscated at the borders. The goods would then have to be donated, recycled or destroyed. Goods of strategic or critical importance for the Union may be withheld until the company eliminates forced labour from its supply chains.

Firms that do not comply can be fined. However, if they eliminate forced labour from their supply chains, banned products can be allowed back on the market.

High-risk goods and areas

At Parliament’s insistence, the Commission will draw up a list of specific economic sectors in specific geographical areas where state-imposed forced labour exists. This will then become a criterion to assess the need to open an investigation.

The Commission can also identify products or product groups for which importers and exporters will have to submit extra details to EU customs, such as information on the manufacturer and suppliers of these products.

Digital tools and cooperation, including with third countries

A new Forced Labour Single Portal would be set up to help enforce the new rules. It includes guidelines, information on bans, database of risk areas and sectors, as well as publicly available evidence and a whistleblower portal. A Union Network Against Forced Labour Products would help to improve cooperation between authorities.

The rules also foresee cooperation with third countries, for example in the context of existing dialogues or implementation of trade agreements. This may include information exchange on risk areas or products and sharing best practices, in particular with countries with similar legislation in place. Commission acting as a lead competent authority may also carry out checks and inspections in third countries, if the relevant company and the government of the third country agree to it.

Next steps

The European Parliament and Council will now both have to give their final green light to the provisional agreement. The regulation will then be published in the Official Journal and enter into force the following day. EU countries will thereafter have 3 years to start applying the new rules.

Background

The forced labour regulation focuses on products and will not place additional due diligence requirements on companies that do not use forced labour in their supply chains. Nevertheless, it is often associated with the directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence that was provisionally agreed between Parliament and Council, but that has so far not been given a final OK from the Council.

So yeah, that’s good news. However, because it is not fisheries-specific, it falls short of requiring “official assurances” (as in food safety and legal catch) from the flag state concerning compliance with ILO C188 (Working in Fishing Convention), which for me, would be the way to go.

Yet, interestingly, it talks at the end of an area you read very little about: “due diligence” by operators.

We tackled that topic in a paper with Katrina Nakamura and Yoshitaka Ota back in 2021, and it is good to see that while not fully there yet… is being discussed.

Let's see where this leads. For me, it is all positive as long as it does not fall into the hands of private certifications…

The Pacific Climate Awareness Workshop (CLAW) on Fisheries Impacts in the region

Today is the 3rd day I'm involved at the Pacific Climate Awareness Workshop (CLAW) in Wellington. This is a 4-Day Course with Emphasis on Fisheries Impacts in the Pacific, Adaptation and Loss and Damage Advocacy.

It would be an understatement to say it is a sobering (and sometimes soul-crushing) workshop, and the learnings I get from here will be coming slowly to this blog over the following months.

It is not your right to buy a truck or fly for holidays….is this kid's right for a better future.

The workshop's premise is very sound: climate change impacts, sea level rise, and temperature are affecting Pacific islands in terms of their existence in the long term, and economic viability in the medium term, as climate change affects tuna distribution and abundance.

Lots have been discussed over a long time so far, yet we are facing an increasing scope of research from climate science that needs to come into fisheries science… which sometimes uses similar terminology with different meanings, which is already confusing for Anglophones and even more so for those that have English as 2nd, 3rd or 4th language as in the case of many people in the Pacific.

Hence, this workshop responds to the need to standardise language and concepts while having the latest information and research on climate change, fisheries and their interaction.

The meeting is organised by the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Pacific Islands Fisheries Forum Agency (FFA), with the economic support of the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. And a splendid job has been done… they have brought together the top scientists and practitioners from the region and afar.

All the presentations have been great, and having the right and most updated info is excellent, even if it is pretty daunting.

I just put some of the many slides below for illustration…  

On the side discussions I asked my colleagues how they deal with climate doomerism, it must be extremely demoralising being on the monitoring and modelling end of this topic, particularly knowing how this affects people they know and work with.

I was told that “Climate doomerism is dangerous. Climate optimism is even worse. Hope is crucial in effecting change. Blind optimism is not”.

This makes sense to me… and brings me back to two of my favourite quotes that I use very often:

“We have two choices: to abandon hope and ensure that the worst will happen, or to make use of the opportunities that exist and contribute to a better world. It is not a very difficult choice.” Noam Chomsky

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”. James Baldwin

Why not a Flag State Responsibilities Agreement (FSRA?)

I spend most of our southern hemisphere summer break writing a fisheries chapter for the forthcoming Oxford University Handbook of Human Rights at Sea, a study around the mess that HS Longliners Transhipment is in the WCPO and a Sharks NPOA for RMI.

But last week was back on meetings and workshops, albeit unusual for me since it was in Auckland, just 40 minutes by boat from my home in Waiheke; this was for the FAO PSMA Regional Coordination Meeting - South West Pacific.

The PSMA (Port State Measures Agreement) has been a very successful one since it started in 2009 and has 76 parties today.

I have been a full believer in the power of PSM and have been setting up systems and supporting countries on its implementation for FAO and many other agencies. And I always maintained that there is a difference between becoming a party (signing it) and implementing it, it is the implementation that impacts IUU fishing, not ratifying the agreement and being on a website.

My work in RMI with PSM is completely aligned with PSMA and has proven effective against IUU, even if we have not ratified.

Yet I feel, to a certain degree, that we need to resource have good PSM in developing countries and, in particular, island states because of the overall failure of flag state responsibility.

A clear legal and jurisdictional framework for addressing labour rights on board fishing vessels has been stated since 1994 in Article 94(1) and Article 94(3) of UNCLOS. These articles assign a vessel's flag state with the responsibility for, inter alia, ‘administrative, technical and social matters’.

It is crucial to emphasise that flag State obligation is unequivocal, especially considering that UNCLOS, from its outset, is a “package deal” agreement where all its aspects are interdependent and cannot be agreed upon separately.

Following the advisory opinion of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission case, flag States must exercise due diligence and ‘not an obligation of result’. The flag State is responsible for exercising due diligence to ensure that vessels under their flag comply with all relevant standards under the “applicable international instruments".

Yet even after all that heavy-hitting referencing, internationally, we only have since 2014 the “FAO Voluntary Guidelines for Flag State Performance (VGFSP)” to provide guidance to strengthen and monitor compliance by flag States with their international duties and obligations regarding the flagging and control of fishing vessels.

Not the language… performance (instead of responsibility), guidance (instead of due diligence)… is all soft. How flag state keeps getting away with this…? is infuriating to me!

Yeah, it is great that Port State have a binding agreement… all for it! But what about Flag States? To an extent, I could argue that PSM is the “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff”.

Let me illustrate this with an example.

The Seishin, a carrier that operates in the HS, came to Majuro to get a new crew member. We did the intelligence analysis, and we found out that it had fish originating from 25 Longliners (flagged to 4 different DWFN) after transhipping in 8 defined locations in HS pockets and just outside the EEZ of other FFA members.

Following our PSM obligation (crew change is part of port use), we analysed each of the transhipments in the high seas and the activity of the donor longliners and then verified on board that all of them were declared on board (and yes, thankfully, they all were) in fact we found that the vessels had encounters with other extra two longliners, but these weren’t transhipment and the carrier master had the good transfer recipes, and the names and position recorded from the receiving vessels matched.

Yet it took us a day of work! Plus, 3 hrs in the carrier.  

One could argue that the carrier is acting like a “port”, yet we did not find any form of compliance assessment either by the flag state of the longliners authorising them to tranship by the flag state of the carrier. And they are irrefutably primarily responsible for the vessel's action in the HS.

Having a small island state has to take on the responsibility to assess compliance because none of the flag states authorise unloading from their vessels, which is just plain wrong and unfair. 

Where is the due diligence? And the proof of their obligation under UNCLOS (and all the rest)

So yeah… I’d like to see the same level of international scrutiny and support for a binding Flag State Responsibilities Agreement (FSRA?) as to PSMA (even if PSMA has six paragraphs on the role of flag states in it)

RMI's MIMRA working with Tuvalu Fisheries using the transhipment scales

I have been a fisheries consultant for almost 25 years. Obviously, I love it. But there have always been aspects of it that struggle a lot.

top crew

The first and most obvious one is the neo-colonial nature of it. While I try to distance myself from the general attitude around this (to separate myself from some other consultants), the job is based on the continuous identification of the colonial (now former colonial) “subjects” that need protection and guidance under a narrative that depicts local states as inadequate for providing the solutions. (It is even hard to digest while i write it)

I discuss this upsetting (for me, at least) issue openly with my colleagues; thankfully, they don’t see it that way. The best analogy I had was the one of having a foreign coach come to train your rugby team (something from which Argentina has benefited).

I justify my neo-colonial fears under the perhaps silly excuses that I have in all of my ancestries a long history of colonised people, and to an extent, I was on the losing side of a war between a full-fledged coloniser and a state that argued they inherited the Malvinas/Falklands from their colonisers after independence (two bald men fighting over a comb, as Borges put it). Also, as I’m older than most of my counterparts, I have definitively made more mistakes than then, so I’m here to help from my fuckups and not from my "enlightenment.”

The second aspect I struggle with is that many end-of-mission reports recommend continuing with assistance. For me, the proof of the success of my job as a consultant is not to be needed ever again in the area where I was working! If I have to come back to do the same or something similar, then I fail in 1) doing my job and 2) motivating and supporting the change that I was asked to foster.

There are more. But for another day...

Unfortunately, I have learned to live with the colonial aspect of it, and thankfully, I have had quite a few projects where the second aspect evaporates. Here is an example.

A couple of days ago, my friend and colleague Beau (top bloke!), whom I have been working with for over six years in the Marshalls, sent me a few pictures that made me very happy.

Back in late 2019, we worked out a selection process for scales to be used during transhipments to control the potential of misreporting (among other things) in Majuro by the transhipment monitors. We are all very proud of the job and have procured quite a few of those scales to operate with them.

This proved quite successful for us, and good ideas spread for themselves, so this week, on an interagency collaboration, the Tuvalu Fisheries Agency (I wrote about their work here) sent a couple of their officers to work in RMI with Beau, Melvin, Steven, and Stevenson on the way we use them and operate, so Tuvalu adapts their use to their reality.

This is totally sui generis among the agencies, with no consultant involved, just capable fisheries officers working with each other in a Pacific-led spirit of cooperation.

I absolutely loved it. And I really appreciated Beau’s gesture of sending me the pictures as a kind acknowledgement.

As I wrote in the past: “My Pacific colleagues are the present and future, while I happily fade into a past where those that “know best” have to be from somewhere else.”

scales in action

The use of influential power in ocean governance

I have been in contact with Bianca Haas through her work for a few years and finally met her personally last December at the WCPFC. Besides being a prolific researcher working in areas of my interest, she is a really lovely person with a curious mind, a great personality and a contagious smile.

Fishers… at once the source and first victims of power in fisheries

I just finished the first draft of the fisheries and aquaculture chapter for the forthcoming Oxford University Handbook on Human Rights at Sea, and her lead or collaborative work is referenced quite a few times.

In any case, while doing the research, I came across this little jewel of paper she led last year that touches on power in ocean governance, which is an area I have been very aware over the years, mainly through the opportunity of being invited to work with small countries on those forums and not being a native English speaker (a minority language in most international language). I have linked that to neo-colonialism and cultural bullying… and this paper by Bianca and fellow authors deals with these topics. It is a great read. I recommend you go for the original.

I've quoted the abstract and, the last paragraph of the Discussion and Conclusion below.

Abstract

Ensuring inclusivity, especially the meaningful participation of diverse actors, is a key component of good governance. However, existing ocean governance frameworks have not yet achieved an equitable and fair playing field and are indeed often characterized by inequitable practices. In this perspective piece, we argue that one of the reasons for this lack of inclusion are the existing power frameworks and ways in which power is exercised within fora nominally intended to foster inclusion and cooperation. By focusing on four case studies of basic ocean governance processes, we explore how influential and interactive power is exercised in intergovernmental meetings, international conferences, and regional negotiations. These case studies demonstrate how specific exercises of power that undermine procedural inclusivity influence decision-making and the setting of agendas, and exclude important voices from ocean governance fora. This perspective piece contributes to the existing literature on power by highlighting how power is exercised within fundamental aspects of ocean governance. This paper merely scratches the surface, and more actions and research are needed to uncover and, more importantly, reverse deeply-rooted and self-perpetuating power structures in ocean governance.

Discussion and Conclusion

The presented examples not only occur in a predetermined set of structures, rules, and guidelines, but also in the context of climate change, biodiversity, trade, security, and fishing, which influence these negotiations, meetings, and conferences. For example, some countries depend on overseas aid or trade agreements with other countries. To achieve their economic aspirations, aid-providing countries might use their power to influence negotiations in multilateral for a. Overall, these four examples demonstrated the different ways how influential and interactive power is exercised in ocean governance fora. Many more forms of power exercise can be experienced in ocean governance, and more work is needed to make power exercises and the resulting consequences visible, to develop strategies to empower actors, and to link the exercise of power to concepts such as colonialism, racism, misogyny, capitalism, or classism in ocean governance.

The evolving relationship between humans and sharks

Sharks are a reality to pretty much all fisheries in the world, at different levels of intensity… they definitively were to all the ones I worked.

Back when I started in the Atlantic, the fin trade wasn’t a reality, tho…. I became aware of it only once I got working in the Pacific in 1991.

I definitively a complex topic (as most things in fishery, actually), and another one where “one size does not fit all”

Yet as a long-distance ocean swimmer, surfer and spearfisher… there is a 2nd interest there for me.

heat map of my swimming, running and cycling in Waiheke in the last 10 years

“Aren’t you worried by sharks?” is a standard question I get asked when the conversation comes to my swimming (10 to 20 km on open ocean) I’m personally not worried too much in the area where I live, as do my fishing (in the gulf, no seal colonies nearby, and I’m almost 2m tall. I have logged almost 2000 km of swimming around Waiheke in the last 20 years and never had an issue… I fact, I’m more worried about people on recreational boats (as I was actually “bitten” by one)

So I spend time explaining the realities, assumptions, and complexities of the issue… and often use “we are not Australia” here in NZ.

And now I got an excellent further toll on my arsenal, and it comes by the hand of two colleagues in Noumea (where they do have a shark on people issue), Jed Macdonald and Lauriane Escalle. (I have mentioned Lauriane on blogs about her awesome FAD work, so it does not surprise me that her science mind is also excellent on this topic) 

In the latest (and consistently excellent) SPC Fisheries Newsletter, they published a fantastic article: The evolving relationship between humans and sharks. A review and discussion of current shark hazard management strategies to foster co-existence, that you can download from here.

The end of the introduction primes for great reading.

"We focus on this issue further here, motivated by a recent spate of human–shark interactions in New Caledonia, and the actions taken by local authorities to reduce the risk of further negative interactions. We first provide some background into the various roles that sharks play as ecosystem sentinels and cultural totems. Next, we dig deeper into the world of human–shark interactions and chart the evolution of thinking around methods to minimise negative outcomes. We then provide an evidence-based overview of current strategies available for mitigating the risk of negative human–shark impacts in nearshore environments, and conclude with a call for further research into solutions centred around understanding and coexistence between humans and sharks."

I absolutely recommend reading it, and I paste the article in its entirety below… but as said, download the original and keep it for future reference.

"a cheerleader like fisheries blogger Francisco Blaha"

I definitely must be the worst-looking cheerleader in the world then!

Good that I train fisheries inspectors on board for a living, imagine trying to be cheerleader looking like the way I do!

As many of you may know, I make a living as a qualified fisheries professional (2 postraduate degrees and 40 years of operational experience) for international organisations and Pacific Island countries… not as a blogger; it is just a hobby, no $ in it, I blog mostly to discuss things that i care about, papers i like, things i see wrong or missleading… and all of it from a absloute personal perpective! (is disclaimed right there in the blog)

In any case, it is a bit disappointing that I'm personally shunted for my honest and totally personal opinions by the people behind Accountability.Fish, whom I actually know personally and appreciate Ryan Orgera, who was great to me in 2018 when he coordinated as PEW officer an expert consultation I was invited to. and Steven Adolf with whom I have collaborated in the past for his excellent investigative reporting.

"I always play the ball, never the man"... I learned that in sports and i stick to it.

I had a similar type of attack by Paul Watson after the Seaspiracy movie, so I hope this time does not come with death threats like on that occasion. I only seen this published in the Ghana news, so I guess their press release wasn't widely received.

In any case, here is a screenshot of my Linkedin comment (back in December) that initiated this cheerleader slunt, so that you can judge for yourself.

My "40 years on fishing rant" in the latest INFOFISH Magazine

INFOFISH is an Intergovernmental Organization set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to provide marketing information and technical advisory services for fishery products in the Asia Pacific Region and beyond. It is based in Kuala Lumpur and has been hosted by Malaysia since its inception in 1981.

They publish the Infofish International magazine and organise and host many events, particularly the tuna forums, to which I’m graciously invited. They have often published some of my writings, and I appreciate it immensely since some of the things I say may not always be palatable to industry, governments, educators, and private certification businesses. So I’m fortunate to have their trust in my personal opinions, as no business relationship exists between us.

In September, I had a rant on the 40th anniversary of my 1st commercial fishing trip… it struck a chord in some people… but not the same in all of them… someone told me that they didn’t know that I was such a “communist”… I was surprised about that… I didn't know that communism was still a thing in 2023! I guess that if having a social conscience and caring about people less lucky than you makes you some soviet style ideologist… it is a sad indictment of our society…

Yet most of the feedback was positive like the one of the editors of Infofish’s international magazine asked me if it would be ok to edit and polish my rant for the January February 2024 edition.

So yeah… here it is… for whatever it’s worth… this link takes you to the pdf, and below are the article's images.

I hope you all had a great New Year.

The WCPO tuna fishery: 2022 overview and status of stocks

It is the time of year when SPC’s flagship tuna publication, “The Western and Central Pacific Tuna Fishery: 2022 Overview and Status of Stocks”, comes out. They are the data collection and science providers of the WCPFC.

The publication always has well-crafted graphs and tables, with some information immediately apparent and others requiring closer reading.

The news still talks about the collapse of tuna fisheries in the Pacific, that the (name your geopolitical nemesis, i.e China, the US, Korea, Japan, EU, etc) are taking all the fish, that the regional management organisations are secret, that we need ecolabels to know if fisheries are sustainable, and so on…

So…Do you want to rely on the multimillion-dollar spin industry for information, or do you prefer to read a document that links all the scientific evidence supporting their claims? This document includes an analysis of the fishery by species and fleet type, as well as the impact of climate change and much more.”

Like most things in life, there is good and bad news. Some things are going well, while others are not. However, if you look closely, you can see beyond the surface.

So, if you're reading this blog, it's probably because you're interested in tuna fisheries in the region. This publication is essential reading for any informed discussion.

What are the things I rescue?

The Good

The main tuna stocks are not overfished, overfishing is not occurring, and we need to keep working hard to make sure it will not occur.

 The Bad

Over the past decade, five species of billfish under the WCPFC-CA have been formally assessed. The Southwest Pacific swordfish and Southwest Pacific striped marlin were last assessed in 2021 and 2019, respectively, by SPC. On the other hand, the North Pacific swordfish (scheduled for assessment in 2023), North Pacific striped marlin (assessed in 2019), and blue marlin (assessed in 2021) were assessed by ISC. The stock status of these species is determined using the Kobe plot approach, which compares the overfished status relative to spawning stock size at MSY. However, there is considerable uncertainty in the estimates of F/FMSY and SB/SBMSY for all five species. Based on the assessment model grid medians, it is likely that the Southwest Pacific striped marlin and North Pacific striped marlin are overfished, while overfishing is also observed for North Pacific swordfish.

Similar to billfish, the bycatch of sharks (which includes both sharks and rays) is much higher in the longline fishery, ranging from 1.5 to 2.0 million individuals, compared to the purse seine fishery, which ranges from 50,000 to 100,000 individuals. The catch of sharks is generally associated with the fishery, although the numbers have been similar in recent years. A detailed species composition analysis is needed better to understand the impact of fishing on shark populations.

The status of silky and oceanic whitetip sharks is of particular concern, as assessments have shown that these stocks are subject to overfishing and, in the case of oceanic whitetip, is severely overfished.

 The worrying future

The projected changes in abundance and redistribution of these tuna associated with climate change could have significant implications for the economic development of Pacific Island countries and territories and the management of tuna resources at the ocean basin scale. In particular, larger proportions of the catch of each species are increasingly expected to be made in international waters.

Bad for fishers

Talked about this before… You see fishing effort in fleet sizes and number of hooks fished (bottom), for the longline fishery in the WCPFC.

In 1993/4 when I was fishing these waters, it was the heyday of LL in the WCPO, peaking into 5000 vessels. Today as you can see, there is only 1/3 of that fleet left (1600), yet they are soaking almost twice the number of hooks. How can that be possible? Deck and gear setting technology are almost the same… response: overworking crew.. workload has been duplicated.

 Since then, transhipment at sea has exploded (as I reported before), which allows the vessels to stay fishing longer and, sadly, massively increases the crew's workload.

The mess that is the DWN Longline fleet in the high Seas of the WCPO

One thing that merges clearly from the WCPFC meeting we just finished is the profound mess in almost every aspect that is the High Seas longline industry here in the region.

I’m not saying this as Longline “hater”; it is all the opposite… While all fishing gear have advantages and disadvantages (like everything else in life!) I have had a special thing for longline…. While in most gears, physics and oceanography (they are closely related), the longline has a lot of chemistry… is perhaps the most skilful and “scientific” of fishing gear I fished with. You need to understand and play with depth, currents, thermocline, primary productivity/temperature, target species chemoreceptors, length and spacing of branch lines, catch manipulation and quality, freezing physics and many more elements… 

it shouldt be so unsusal to see one of these coing to ports in the region

I explored the chemistry side in my thesis on the development of a selective bait for the Longlining Fishery of Snapper (Pagrus auratus) and maintained an interest in it over the years, as you can read here, here, and all over here, to mention a few…, yet always from the perspective of understanding how a longliner catches a group of fishes but never thought on how longlines fish as a group until I was asked to collaborate on a paper on their fleet dynamics.

This is the link for a big picture of the longline sector in the WCPO and their market dynamics (albeit a bit dated - 2017).

And while I am fine with the domestic and EEZ-based operations, the High Seas fleet is a total mess. Their problems come up in one way or another in almost EVERY session I participated while at the WCPFC plenary.

The very limited MCS coverage of the High Seas in particular, and the (here I go again) abuse of the impracticability exemption has many consequences, below are some of them, starting with the one that is at the root of many other problems: the abuse of the impracticability exemption Transhipments in the High Seas.

The abuse of the impracticability exemption Transhipments in the High Seas.

Reported high-seas transhipment events in the WCPO have more than doubled from 2011 to 2019. In 2021, 62% of vessels listed on the Record of Fishing Vessels were authorised to transship in the high seas, 85% of which are longliners.

I have been over this a lot over the years, and I explain it here, and is illustrated here, fixing this will cascade on a series of benefits all related to the topics below:

Sustainability of Sharks and billfish and general bycatch

The tropical tuna stocks in the WCPFC are healthy, which is good news from the Pacific Community-SPC.

Sharks and billfish are a different story.  As you can see in the table below…  The limited knowledge of these stocks and their poor status are the direct result of the failure of the DWFN to monitor and manage the high seas longline fisheries properly. The graphs below from the latest status of the stocks are self-explanatory.

 As per Seabirds… increasing observer coverage and EM would be a great start, but further bringing them to port would allow to apply PSM to the requirements of CMM 2018-03 on tori lines and weighed branch lines, also we have the capacity now to see if they were setting at night. The situation of some seabirds like the Southern Royal Albatross (Toroa) is threatened with most of the mortality coming from HS longliners., so we are reviewing the CMM since is not really working.

Misreporting

In 2016 and 2021, we proved with the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) IUU Quantification studies that misreporting, particularly in the LL fishery, is our biggest issue in the region. I quote: “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”

Overall, bringing them to port brings them under the purview of PSM… and that is only a good thing.

Crew issues

HS long liners rarely come to any port in the Pacific… I have seen vessels stay at sea for over 16 months… all reprovisioning and crew changes are done while transhipping at sea. No one has a mass balance of crew boarding and leaving. Any immigration status does not cover those vessels, so there is no really a verifiable identification of who comes on board and who disembarks when and where… that alone would already be, in my mind, a reason to close a fishery down on labour issues… yet it gets worst… (believe it or not)

As I pointed out here, the fishery has been declining in volumes and number of vessels over the years, but a more direct measure of effort (hooks fished) has shown a different trend. Total hooks fished in the WCPFC-CA increased from a level of 400 million in the mid 1970s to 600 million in the early 2000s to 800 million in the early 2010s. The peak year in hooks fished was 2012 at 888 million hooks; the level in 2021 was 612 million hooks, a decline of 12% from the 2020 level, and nearly 16% below the average of the previous five years.

And for me, this graph below (page 47 in the SPC WCPO status of the stocks) is indirect proof of the linkages of both.

You see fishing effort, in fleet sizes and number of hooks fished (bottom), for the longline fishery in the WCPFC

In 1993/4 when I was fishing these waters, it was the heyday of LL in the WCPO, peaking into 5000 vessels. Today as you can see, there is only 1/3 of that fleet left (1600), yet they are soaking almost twice the number of hooks. How can that be possible? Deck and gear setting technology are almost the same… response: overworking crew.. workload has been duplicated.

Since then, transhipment at sea has exploded (as I reported before), which allows the vessels to stay fishing longer and, sadly, massively increases the crew's workload.

Bringing the LL to port could help a lot with the overview of the labour conditions on board, and also give the crew the option to voice grievances.

Electronic Monitoring

I wrote about this in the past, the cameras onboard are just the visible tip of the iceberg when it comes to EM, and while some see camera monitoring as a viable alternative to onboard human observers, others feel that on-board observers will remain necessary for the foreseeable future, at minimum to perform biological sampling and compliance monitoring where cameras are insufficient. The reality is that EM systems can complement the role of human observers and enhance overall observer coverage most particularly in the longline fishery, which is barely struggling this year to push up to 10% coverage.

While “on board” internet prices are coming down rapidly, many LL fleets argue that “live video” footage through satellite transmission is not cost-effective at present, so the footage is stored on a hard drive that then needs to be sent to for analysis (not the best option for compliance). In any case, to pass HD to carriers at sea, to then be delivered to some analysis somewhere, adds an extra layer of complication and risks (I could easily corrupt the disk before passing them to the carrier and then claim they were working, and so on). Coming to port to tranship or unload is the best option, and perhaps we should require it as a licensing condition that if you don’t do live EM, you have to come to port with the HD… as not to be too draconian and give operators an option.

MARPOL

In 2021 a couple of friends (Alice and Robert) and I got awarded a contract for a study aimed to: 1) identify, then assess volumes produced board and then potentially dumped, and then 2) come up with practical and policy-based alternatives that are aligned to the regional framework (a WCPFC CMM) and the international one (MARPOL convention) while thinking laterally around how to do under limited enforcement opportunities. (see here)

As part of part 2, we proposed among others these resulting strategic points.

Either waste is dumped into the sea, or it is returned to port at some point, and in some form. MARPOL does not allow the dumping of any solid wastes considered in this study to be dumped into the ocean, including incinerator ashes, thus: All vessels should return with some quantity of waste to be off-loaded at port.

The issue of onboard waste management is fundamentally a logistical challenge; all of the materials that become waste were put on the ship either in port or during a carrier transhipment, thus: Existing reversed logistical pathways must be used. 

Pacific Island ports already have a domestic waste crisis and are, in very large part, unsuitable places to take foreign waste generated by overseas business operations. Therefore, aside from local-based fishing vessels, vessel waste needs to be returned to originating home ports, thus: Wastes from vessels of distant-water fishing nations should not be off-loaded at Pacific Island ports. 

Larger vessels are much better placed to have better waste management systems because they have more space, can operate small compactors to increase waste density, can operate safe and compliant incinerators, and can handle and stow larger waste containers thus: Carrier vessels must accept waste from fishing vessels. 

There is presently no way to control MARPOL compliance at sea or transhipments at sea… (EM has a potential role) for the proposals to work, longliners need to come to port and tranship their rubbish to carriers prior or after their fish… otherwise nothing is gonna work

So yea… this is not a comprehensive list, and surely there are more aspects that I’m not considering, but the above ones are already compelling.

So yeah… LL is a mess, I see an inevitable decline in the fishery as the money isn’t there, yet its geopolitical value is immense for the DWFN (if you have a presence, you have rights) and LL are relatively cheap to subsidize (since they pay crew shit and they bunker at sea), so is going to be around for a while, and we need to control it better.

Back from my first RFMO plennary

The objective of this Convention that established WCPFC is to ensure, through effective management, the long-term conservation and sustainable use of highly migratory fish stocks in the western and central Pacific Ocean. and that is what they endeavour to do.

So it was very interesting for me to be in the plenary this last week in the Cook Islands. Sadly, there was not much advance in the 3 areas I work the most; MCS for LL had some lukewarm advances but nothing to rave about, the High Seas Transhipment CMM (I’m writing a blog after this exclusively on the mess that HS Longline is) and the rollover into its 4th year of discussion of the fishers' labour CMM.

RFMOs are complex beasts, each with its own complications and culture. If they didn’t exist, we would have to invent them.

I’m not arguing that RFMOS are a panacea to all fisheries issues, far from that …. but they are MUCH better than nothing! And there has been quite a lot of experience gained over the decades in designing them better and research on operating them with lessons learned.

The key advantage that an RFMO will immediately bring is that there would be a table where people will talk and agree to comply (at least on paper with rules). Some key tools relate to their fundamental workings: a science committee that assesses the stock status and agrees to conservation and management measures, a technical and compliance committee that set up the basis of a vessel registry, a VMS, a compliance monitoring schemes, an IUU list and so on...

They were designed with the common good in mind; we all work together to fulfil the objective of ensuring, through effective management, the long-term conservation and sustainable use of fish stocks.

So in principle, they are supposed to work as an antidote of what Hardin called the tragedy of commons… according to this concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a fishery, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up wrecking its value.

So far, so good… yet I see in the way they work that the tragedy of commons still applies, but on a more nuanced level, not as “individuals” but as those representing the member states.

I guess that as part of human and institutional nature when it comes to the geopolitics of fisheries, it does not seem a rational choice to exercise voluntary restraint when acting on behalf of a country– if they did, the other countries would merely take advantage – even if the predictable result is a tragedy for all… so a delicate game is played.

And of course, this is not any sort of moral issue by the people in the room; I know their hearts and intentions are in the right place, yet they have a job to do and a line to hold.

I noticed the situation during the meeting, but with different dynamics between the Pacific Island countries and the DWFN…

Fisheries in this region are, after all, of the Pics. My Nauruan Friend Monte Depaune said something to me many years ago that was illuminating: “for non-Pacific Islands and Distant Water Fishing Nations (DWFN) the issue of tuna sustainability is one of long-term financial benefit. However, for coastal States PICs it is also an identity and food security issue, one that DWFNs have less trouble with, as they can leave… but PICs cannot”. 

So the level of cohesion, unity and, to an extent, “altruism” inside the Pacific Islands block is quite high, yet even so, the 2 subgroups in between FFA (PNA and the newest South Pacific Group - SPG) have sometimes very different interest… albeit not always as different as in-between PICs and DWFN.

Yet the point I’m making is that the common interest of the RFMO is to close the door to newcomers (less pie to share for everyone) and then to try to concede the less possible to the common good by defending their sometimes minimal (in comparison to the whole value of the fishery) interest to the extent of wreaking the common good.

They do this either by suggesting non-committal language, applying for exemptions and footnotes, or diluting language to the point of reading more like policy than conservation and management measures (CMMs).

And inside these setups, countries play some 3D chess, where all sorts of horse-trading go in and shrug negotiation strategies, which are unique to watch and be part.

Yet it all feels a bit like we are using a Teetotum (a six-sided die to play "put and take"), the sides of the die are- "Put one", "Take one", "Put two", "Take two", "All put" (every player puts in) and "Take all"… where most use “put one” and  “take two”.

But as I said in my last post: I can only admire the delegates and the policy advisors of FFA and PNA for their stamina and chess-type strategies to achieve their objectives. This respect and admiration extend to the people in the WCPFC secretariat and the chairs of the working groups… they keep it going and focused after hours of discussions with very different views over the same issue… I finish the day exhausted… I don’t know how they do it… full respect.

The same goes for the science crew of SPC; they get the role of the oracle at short notice, with queries on the potential impacts of new proposals during negotiations.

I have heard many voices talk about the failure of RFMOs, particularly in the high seas… I don’t think is correct. RFMOs are an institution that works inside an intercountry framework based on diplomacy, tradition and geopolitics…  so if there is a problem not on the institution itself, but on the bigger picture

In any case, it was great to be there, and I’m very thankful for the elassos learned, yet that work is not my cup of tea. I see my work closer to the fishery itself in operational and research areas.