Hopes for law changes on longline fishing

Transcript

Fisheries scientists are hoping new evidence which they say proves longline tuna vessels have been specifically targeting threatened sharks will provoke law changes.

It was previously thought the silky and oceanic whitetip sharks, whose numbers have been heavily depleted, were victims of unintended bycatch by tuna vessels.

But the principal fisheries scientist at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Shelton Harley, told Jamie Tahana a new study has proved that some longline fishers are using lines with wire traces and special bait to attract the sharks.

SHELTON HARLEY: Two years ago we assessed the status of these two shark species and we found that the tuna longline fishery was the one that was catching most of these sharks, but quite recently we've looked at the observer data and found that in fact many of these sharks had taken on lines that are specifically targetting sharks on these tuna boats.

JAMIE TAHANA: This has been happening undetected?

SH: Yeah we think that this has probably been the practice for several years to attach these special lines specifically attempting to catch shark. It hasn't been illegal to do this mode of fishing and we only discovered it when the tuna commission said to us, "well look, if we need to help these shark stocks to recover, we need to reduce our impact - minimise our chances of catching - and how do we do that?" And that's when we looked at the data and found that well actually many of the boats out there are deliberately trying to catch them.

JT: And what is the shark stock like?

SH: Well these two particular sharks; the silky shark and the oceanic white tip, are not in particularly good shape. They're well below the level that would support what we would call a maximum sustainable yield and the fishing pressure on them is very high relative to what they can sustain because these are quite long-lived, slow growing species with a small number of pups each year or so.

JT: Ok, and so to go the way it's going with such fishing, it'll be unsustainable?

SH: Oh definitely, what's happening to these two species in particular is not sustainable at all and that's why the call has been made to ban this mode of fishing. And also I guess it's important to note that our study also found that there was many other sharks that were taking on these lines such as Hammerhead sharks and Tiger sharks - we don't know how healthy those populations are.

JT: Ok so the call has been made to ban this type of fishing. How would you go about doing that?

SH: The regional body that makes decisions on how we manage the tuna fisheries is the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. The proposal was made to its annual meeting in December last year and there were some countries that felt that they didn't want to ban those shark lines. But the Pacific Island countries are very likely to make the same proposal again this year when the tuna commission meets in Apia in December and so that's the body where the discussion and the debate will be had around this mode of fishing.

JT: If that was rejected last year, how likely is it that the ban would be passed this year? How significant is this new evidence?

SH: Well we hope that it's very significant. In fisheries quite often the data is uncertain, but this is one of the most certain things that I've come across that these lines have been used to catch sharks. And given that these two species are in even worse shape we're very much hoping that common sense will prevail.