The Forum Fisheries Agency says new restrictions could fall on distant water fishing nations operating in Pacific waters.
The comments came during the annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commissionr, or Tuna Commission, taking place in Pasay City in the Philippines.
FFA's director-general, James Movick, spoke with Mackenzie Smith about the meeting and what the Pacific wants to see emerge.
He says it is just Asian nations threatening the Pacific's fisheries.
Tuna on the deck of a Pacific fishing vessel.
Photo: RNZI/Giff Johnson
Transcript
JAMES MOVICK: The United States also and to some extent the European Union in the types of positions that they are seeking with regard to further loosening of the purse seine fishing on the high seas is also a threat to certainly the conservation of big eye tuna unless it's balanced by cuts in the high seas long line fisheries as well. So it's not just the Asians, I think we've seen by both the Asians as well as the US and EU too much of a willingness to try and open up the fishery, because the science is now saying that big eye tuna resources are not being overfished or in a state of overfishing, but the Pacific view is that it's still too early in the day to draw that as a firm conclusion, that we do have to be precautionary and certainly it's premature at this point in time.
MACKENZIE SMITH: So when we're talking about solutions, do you think those would come in the form of restricting the amount of international players in those fishing waters?
JM: Well, certainly from the Pacific perspective we see that as a very viable option for the region to consider insofar as an extension of the types of measures and policies that we've been implementing in-zone to restrain catch limits within our collective EEZs, the kinds of MCS measures, monitoring control and surveillance measures we have in place, which are not the same on the high seas where the robustness of management and enforcement measures there is not as strong as we have in-zone. Remember we are working on a bridging tropical tuna solution. I gather from the latest negotiations that have occurred overnight that they are making some progress towards that, balancing the various trade offs between the purse seine and the long line sectors. But ultimately we do have to move towards establishing hard limits that can be followed in all of the fisheries, both in-zone and in the high seas, allocating those fairly and then adopting harvest control rules so that in the future when we do run into situations of overfishing or risks to the state of the fishery we are able to make decisions on a smooth, objective basis.
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