Tuna

Fiji calls for restructure of the tuna industry in the Pacific

While addressing the Pacific Tuna Forum in Nadi today, Osea Naiqamu says challenges facing the Tuna industry requires tough questioned to be asked.

A recent World Bank study estimates the catch value of tuna in our region at US$2.4 billion. 

Tags: 

NZ has a lot to learn about Pacific Tuna: PNA

Dr Aqorau was responding to a New Zealand-led push at the Pacific Islands Forum to help shift the region away from daily catches via the Vessel Day Scheme.

The scheme has brought rising incomes to PNA countries but New Zealand says advances in technology and bigger fishing boats are resulting in larger catches which could render the scheme unsustainable.

Dr Aqorau says the only areas in which unsustainable catches are occurring are those outside the control of its Vessel Day Scheme.

Tuna fishery high on Pacific leaders' minds

The state of the world's only healthy tuna fishery is high on the agenda for Pacific leaders, who are in Papua New Guinea's capital Port Moresby for the annual Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting.

Prime Minister John Key and Foreign Minister Murray McCully arrive today ahead of the main talks tomorrow and Thursday.

Pacific leaders will be putting their heads together to work out how to maximise revenue from the Pacific's US$4 billion a year tuna catch – and ensure more of it stays in the region.

Warning over Pacific bluefin tuna stocks

A four-day meeting in Sapporo, northern Japan, of countries that monitor stocks in most of the Pacific Ocean, made no progress towards helping fish populations recover from decades of overfishing, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Faced with the collapse of bluefin stocks, last year members of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission decided to halve the catch of tuna under 30kg from its average level in 2002-2004, although conservation groups had called for a moratorium to give stocks time to recover.

Tags: 

Pole-and-line tuna catch remains healthy, affirms IPNLF

The study focused on the production of Indonesian tuna fisheries in selected provinces, with the aim of  helping dispel any confusion over the size of the country’s pole-and-line catch and to clarify how much of the production enters commercial supply chains.

Recent reports have been circulated claiming Indonesia’s pole-and-line tuna catch fell to 10,000 tonnes last year, which is just one-tenth of the total volume that is generally accepted and reflected in the most recent Government capture fisheries statistics for 2014.

Failed fish treaty casts doubt on US-Pacific aid

US and Pacific officials met in Australia to discuss renewing the 1988 South Pacific Tuna Treaty which allows US vessels to fish in the exclusive economic zones of Pacific Island countries.

But instead an 89 million US dollar deal for 2016 was reached with the US saying its participation beyond that is uncertain.

The Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency's deputy director general, Wez Norris, says the US provides financial assistance under the Treaty and the agency is taking the threat of lost aid seriously.

Tuna treaty can help with anti-trafficking push, industry says

The 1987 South Pacific Tuna Treaty, which provides US purse seine vessels access to the Western and Central Pacific Ocean fisheries, has been extended through interim agreements since 2013, but a longer-term renewal hasn't been agreed to.

At a meeting this week in Brisbane, Australia, the United States and Pacific island nations party to the treaty agreed to an extension through 2016, said Doug Hines, executive director of South Pacific Tuna Corp., which represents 14 purse seine vessels fishing under the treaty. Company owners attended the Australia meeting.