Jury still out on benefit of Solomons mega purse seiners

Transcript

Regional fisheries officials are not sure whether Solomon Islands move to locally flag three Taiwanese mega purse seiners will benefit the country.

New Zealand journalist Mike Field claims the deal was secured through corrupt means.

He says there would be no benefit for Solomon Islanders.

But the deputy director general of the Forum Fisheries Agency, Wez Norris, told Koroi Hawkins the move is in line with the wider regional approach to building up Pacific based fleets.

WEZ NORRIS: No well I think the first thing that I would say about this is that we fight very hard to make sure that the right of Pacific Island countries to build their domestic fishing fleets is maintained and that they have the opportunity to do that. So you know just the fact that countries are bringing in new vessels doesn't mean that there is a problem with what they are doing.

KOROI HAWKINS: And is there a problem apart from just bringing in new vessels?

WN: Look certainly there is no problem that we are aware of with this. With new flagged vessels obviously comes new responsibilities for the Solomon Islands and so we will certainly make sure that we offer our assistance to ensure that we could live up to those new obligations and I guess as part of our domestic fleet the Solomon's will need to make sure that they have sufficient fishing days under the vessel day scheme and so on and so forth. But I think on this issue of domestication and the building of new fleets, the Solomon Islands is an example of where it has worked the best and if you have a look a the Soltuna cannery and the National Fisheries Development program where you have very high rates of crewing onboard fishing vessels. You have got high rates of unemployment of Solomon Islanders in the cannery and so on. So I don't I think it is probably certainly very early to be making conclusions about whether or not this is in the best interest of the country.

KH: What about the size of these boats another thing raised was that the potential for these boats to be only able to tranship on the high seas is that actually factual?

WN: No that is incorrect purse seine vessels are not allowed to tranship at sea at all. They have to go into a port somewhere to undertake their transhipment. In terms of the size of the vessels, while these are relatively large in terms of tonnage they said that they are I think 70 and 80 metres in length. The vessel day scheme does take into account the different sizes of vessels when it works out how many fishing days a given boat would have to buy. And very large vessels need to buy more days than small boats just for one, just for the same amount of time at sea.

KH: So would it be fair to say that it's encouraging then to see the Solomon Islands going out and getting its own boats?

WN: Yeah I think there are two provisos to that statement. It is encouraging as long as they have the resources and the commitment to live up to the obligations that they have as a flag state to make sure that the vessels fish in accordance with all the rules and so on. And it is encouraging so long as there are adequate arrangements in place to make sure that the country really does benefit from those vessels being flagged to the Solomon Islands as opposed to being flagged to any other country.