Author——————————-
David Gershman
Officer, International Fisheries
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The western and central Pacific is the world’s largest source of canned tuna. Skipjack tuna and albacore tuna are the two species predominantly caught for the canned tuna market and which are valued at $10 billion.
When the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meets Dec. 4-8 in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, the region’s fisheries managers will have a chance to ensure the long-term sustainability of these two vital species by making further progress in developing management procedures.
A management procedure (MP) is a pre-agreed strategy for making fisheries management decisions such as setting limits on catch or fishing effort. Also known as a harvest strategy, a management procedure helps ensure sustainability by allowing managers to select the harvest control rule that is predicted through computer simulation to perform the best at maintaining the stock and fishery at desirable levels.
Albacore tuna, managed as separate stocks north and south of the equator, features prominently on the agenda of the WCPFC. Last year, WCPFC adopted nearly all elements of an MP for the north Pacific albacore stock. This year, it has a chance to fill in a critical missing piece – the information needed to operationalize a formulaic harvest control rule.
Having already been adopted in the eastern Pacific by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, adoption by WCPFC would create the first multi-regional fisheries management organization MP in the world.
One reason to develop an MP is it avoids protracted and ad-hoc negotiations on how to adjust catch or effort levels because those rules are agreed in advance. But to do that effectively, the MP should be binding on members, and its output should be directly linked to the on-the-water controls that govern vessel behavior.
At WCPFC, there’s more work to do on that front for both north Pacific albacore and skipjack. For instance, the north Pacific albacore MP is being proposed as a ‘harvest strategy’ agreement, which some members see as a decision that can be binding on the Commission. To remove any doubt or question as to its legal status, WCPFC should adopt the MP as a conservation and management measure (CMM). That would ensure members are bound to all the elements of the management procedure.
The skipjack tuna management procedure, on the other hand, was adopted last year as a CMM, but members agreed to apply it on a trial basis for six years, regrettably meaning they reserved the right to ignore its output during this time.
Now that the management procedure has been run for the first time, it should set catch or effort levels for 2024 through 2026. The result calls to set maximum fishing conditions at various baseline levels, depending on the gear, so members should have greater comfort with this approach. What this means is the WCPFC doesn’t have to make any changes to fishing on the water, since recent fishing has been less than the amount permitted by the MP. That’s good news, but not the end of the story.
Skipjack is managed through the WCPFC’s tropical tuna measure, which also regulates opportunities for bigeye and yellowfin tunas. This complex measure reflects a careful balance of members’ national interests. It has various components – some fleets have limits in the international waters, some do not. Limits in some zones are fully utilized; others are mainly aspirational. Aligning the measure to make its scheme of limits more seamlessly automate the output of the MP will take time but is a necessary task.
But, as members renegotiate the tropical tuna measure, political considerations can come into play and risk overriding the scientific advice coming from the MP. In updating the measure, members’ first objective should be to ensure a clear link to the skipjack MP and that the total catch or effort of skipjack anticipated to take place in the next three years across the Western and Central Pacific Ocean is not greater than what is recommended by the management procedure.
South of the equator, the south Pacific albacore tuna stock, though currently at healthy levels, has been subject to discussions on improving the economic viability of the fishery and preventing a significant decrease in biomass. The fishery is an important food source and economic resource to several South Pacific nations and the territories of American Samoa, New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Vessels from China and Taiwan also fish for this stock in significant numbers.
This year, a group of south Pacific island countries and Australia are proposing a revised target reference point (TRP) for the south Pacific albacore stock, which is necessary to set an overall objective for the fishery’s performance and set the stage for the eventual development of the full MP. It’s important for WCPFC to adopt a revised TRP to stay on track in developing the MP to ensure economic and biological sustainability into the future. The existing TRP, which is not currently used in management, is set at achieving a specific percentage of biomass depletion, but it is susceptible to change when new information alters the historic perception of the trajectory of the stock. The proposal on the table aligns the TRP with the level of biomass depletion experienced during a recent period (i.e., 2017-19) and thereby future proofs the TRP.
WCPFC faces important decisions on the road to modernizing its fisheries and bringing greater predictability and stability to the world’s most important source of canned tuna. Fortunately, members have shown in the past that they can work together to achieve consensus on challenging issues. If that trend continues, WCPFC will take an important step toward safeguarding some of its most important fisheries.
Author——————————-
Shana Miller
Project Director, International Fisheries Conservation – The Ocean Foundation
We had high hopes for harvest strategies at the 2023 meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which just met for 8 days in Cairo, Egypt. Yet, when the gavel dropped yesterday, there was very little progress to show. Both management procedures (MPs) scheduled for adoption according to ICCAT’s own workplan, namely for North Atlantic swordfish and West Atlantic skipjack, were delayed until next year. The incremental steps planned for other species similarly ended in disappointment. The brightest outcome related to harvest strategies was a commitment to consider a management strategy evaluation (MSE) for blue sharks, adding two stocks to ICCAT’s harvest strategy list.
ICCAT started its swordfish MSE several years ago, building on a decade of scientific work on reference points. In 2023 alone, ICCAT convened 3 meetings for dialogue among scientists, managers and other stakeholders about management objectives, candidate management procedures, and other aspects of the MSE. The scientists had 4 formal meetings to advance the technical side of the MSE, in addition to nearly weekly informal meetings. Two draft proposals to adopt a final MP, one from Canada and another from the USA and European Union, were submitted to the meeting. But a late update to some fishing data – dating back to 2021 – required some modifications to the MSE, and this led to slight changes in CMP performance results. Those final results were not available until the first day of the annual meeting. This rattled some governments, making them nervous about adoption, even though the updated results had been reviewed by multiple experts without any red flags. The resulting discussion concluded with a rollover of the existing measure and a plan to review the MSE results more thoroughly next year alongside previously scheduled testing related to impacts on CMP performance of climate change and juvenile mortality. The experience highlights the need to carefully consider data lags in MSEs given ICCAT (and other fisheries organizations) still struggle to receive timely and accurate data from member governments.
The story for western skipjack was similar. ICCAT scientists had endorsed the MSE as complete and ready for MP adoption at their annual meeting in September. Decisionmakers had agreed to near-final management objectives at a meeting earlier in the year after adopting conceptual objectives last year. Brazil, who led the MSE work and is responsible for more than 90% of the catch, was poised to champion an MP measure for adoption. But a proposal never came. Again, a slight question about whether the science was watertight – a question which was not backed by any specific concerns – resulted in the MSE being sent back to the scientists for another year of work. What exactly they’re supposed to accomplish beyond the robust work they’ve already completed is unclear.
With an MP adopted for Atlantic bluefin tuna last year in one of ICCAT’s biggest successes ever, this year’s task was to adopt an exceptional circumstances protocol (ECP) to govern how to proceed should unforeseen and untested scenarios occur in the fishery. Five rounds of review led to a strong proposal being tabled at the meeting. Yet, minutes prior to adoption, a revised version appeared that allows not only decreases in catch limits but also explicitly enables increases under some circumstances. Exceptional circumstances are typically viewed as emergency situations that might require deviation from the MP before the next management cycle to protect a stock. A limit that is “too low” does not constitute an emergency, especially when considering that the quota for bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea is at its highest level ever. So, while an ECP was adopted to finalize the MP as fully specified, it could put more pressure on the scientists’ recommended response should exceptional circumstances be identified in the future.
Another disappointment was a failure to take incremental steps on the multispecies tropical tunas MSE for bigeye, yellowfin and eastern skipjack tunas, all stocks in urgent need of improved management. A U.S. proposal to start developing management objectives for the stocks failed to pass, despite all of the substantive text being bracketed for later completion. Further, the funding requested by ICCAT scientists to engage much-needed external MSE experts in the relatively complicated multispecies framework was approved but only at a greatly reduced level.
The silver lining for blue sharks will result in ICCAT scientists advising on the feasibility of conducting MSEs for the North and South Atlantic stocks. Their guidance is requested by 2025, finally putting an end date on a general request that has been included in each measure for the stocks since 2016. This should be an easy question to answer, since preliminary MSE work is already underway for blue sharks at ICCAT thanks to funding from the FAO Common Oceans project.
It was a tough meeting for harvest strategies, especially considering where things stood just a few weeks ago and despite the fact that this year did see the third running of the northern albacore MP, demonstrating the value of MP adoption for the governance of international fisheries. The northern albacore catch limit was increased by 25% to its highest level ever since the stock continues to grow. That should serve as motivation to replicate this success for ICCAT’s other priority stocks, but regrettably that wasn’t the case this year. Instead, ICCAT rolled these tasks over to next year’s already busy schedule. We hope everyone will learn the necessary lessons to ensure things stay on track moving forward. We look forward to providing a better update after ICCAT’s 2024 meeting.
Author_______________
Steven Adolf
Senior Consultant – Sustainable Fisheries and Ocean Management
Author of “Tuna Wars”
✉️
Based on outcomes of recent negotiations on the management of Northeast Atlantic pelagic fish stocks (mackerel, blue whiting and atlanto-scandian herring), the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) and associated coastal states must urgently revise how they make decisions, involve stakeholders, and function as an international fisheries management body. If it does not succeed, the organization runs the risk of a total failure in the management policy of a number of stocks of global importance, resulting in a major crisis of sustainable market supply.
At first glance, many conditions that should make NEAFC a successful organization when it comes to the sustainable management of internationally shared fish stocks seem met. With only six contracting Parties (Denmark for the Faroe Islands and Greenland, the European Union, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom), NEAFC has a relatively small number of states that need to agree on management measures. And, most of those states have a well-developed notion of sustainable fisheries management domestically and internationally via other Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMOs). Moreover, the NEAFC and coastal states already have a history of agreeing on harvest strategies, or what NEAFC calls long-term management strategies (LTMS’s) for herring, mackerel and blue whiting tested via management strategy evaluation (MSE).
A growing consensus of all stakeholders involved – fisheries, market, government officials and NGOs – is that modern management of international fisheries needs harvest strategies. These management procedures, being pre‑agreed systems for making fisheries management decisions, like setting catch limits, save time and money by avoiding regularly recurring political negotiations for each stock status update. Harvest strategies not only ensure the health of the stocks and a long-term profitability of the fisheries, but also increase the stability and predictability of the supply for the markets.
But instead of a success-story of implementing harvest strategies, NEAFC runs the risk of becoming a proverbial case of The Tragedy of the Commons: a dysfunctional RFMO that passes its responsibilities onto groups of coastal states that are incapable of the collective action required to manage these important shared stocks successfully, and with public transparency and accountability.
The core of the problem: the coastal states have, in recent years, failed to agree upon quota allocation mechanisms for the Total Allowable Catches (TACs) set by LTMS’s or advice of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) – the science organisation responsible for advising governments on sustainable catch limits. Instead, each state sets a quota for itself, which in practice means the total annual catches are collectively and quite significantly above the scientifically advised TAC for each stock.
In the last six years alone, total combined catches of atlanto-scandian herring, mackerel and blue whiting have exceeded the catch amount advised by scientists by 31%. The consequences have been dramatic, with ICES advising in September a steep cut of 44% in herring catches, equivalent to 390,010 metric tonnes, is required for 2024. This is reminiscent of the herring stock collapse in the 1960s.
In the case of mackerel, the crisis has become known as the ‘mackerel war’. According to an article published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the mackerel war can be seen as a conflict that represents a broader issue of the effects of climate change on migratory fish stocks. As the seas warmed in the early 2000s, ‘mackerel began moving northward in search of colder waters’, the authors write. As a result, Iceland entered the NEAFC agreement and wanted ‘its fair share of the allocation’ of the newly arrived mackerel in its waters. Negotiations for the allocation of the fish ended up on a dead-end road. Catches regularly exceeding scientific advice has become the new norm, with the United Kingdom’s Marine Conservation Society announcing earlier this year that the Northeast Atlantic mackerel populations were ‘at risk’.
ICES advice shows overfishing and a continued downwards trend in the stock size of herring and mackerel towards levels that are not biologically safe. It seems that this deadlock situation will not change on short notice. This October there was agreement between the coastal states to set TACs for the stocks according to ICES scientific advice. This is expected to be rubber-stamped at the NEAFC annual meeting, but there was no breakthrough that offers the prospect of a workable quota allocation mechanism between the states, so effectively overfishing will continue unchanged.
The failure to prevent overfishing of the commercially important fish stocks of mackerel, atlanto-scandian herring and blue whiting has become a major headache for retail and trade. This is particularly true in Europe, one of the largest mackerel markets in the world with a supply of 619 kt in 2020, of which 72% comes from the North-East Atlantic coastal states. The allocation disputes have consistently meant NEA coastal states have missed their own deadlines to re-evaluate the sustainability of their management strategies. And, with the total catch regularly exceeding the scientific advice, processors, trade and retailers saw their MSC sustainability certifications suspended, since 2019 for mackerel and since 2020 for herring and blue whiting.
This undermining of existing commercial strategies for sustainable sourcing hits the markets hard. Sustainability has gone from a luxury to a necessity. Marketing and purchasing departments have invested time and substantial money in getting a certified product in the market. The certification favours market access and provides a predictable supply. And in the end, it adds shareholder value to the companies with the increasingly strict European Union regulations on sustainability reporting rules for companies. In a symposium on the current situation of NEAFC organised by the MSC in London early summer, the growing annoyance and concerns of major market stakeholders about the failing management of NEAFC was therefore widely felt. Important market stakeholders threatened coastal states that they would search for alternative sourcing policies if this situation does not change.(-5- https://www.msc.org/species/small-pelagic-fish/north-east-atlantic-pelagic-fisheries-report)
Urgent steps to resolve this immediate management crisis should have been taken during negotiations on the 2024 management of Northeast Atlantic pelagic stocks. A growing consensus of all stakeholders involved – fisheries, market, government officials and NGOs – is that modern management of international fisheries needs robust and effective harvest strategies. Mackerel has been well placed to have adoption of an MSE-tested LTMS since 2020, and with the review of the LTMS’s for blue whiting and now herring overdue, managers should be initiating transparent, inclusive evaluations of harvest strategies that are robust to the continued management realities of the NEA pelagic stocks. If the ongoing allocation disputes are not resolved this winter, then TACs for mackerel, herring and blue whiting should really have been set lower than the scientific advice to ensure a sustainable total catch in 2024.
Last but not least: in the light of the ongoing governance failures, there is an urgent need for NEAFC coastal states to look beyond the current crisis and be open for discussion on a performance review and governance reforms for the large pelagic stock management. This should cover commitments to incorporate climate-proofing and ecosystem based-fisheries management into harvest strategies for all key stocks. The review should also explore how to achieve more explicit and systematic engagement of all stakeholders, in particular processing, trade, retail and NGO’s. Without these changes, the coastal states’ management of these straddling stocks is likely to continue falling short of their responsibilities. Considering the current situation in the Northeast Atlantic, that is no longer an option.
Author——————————-
David Gershman
Officer, International Fisheries
✉️
Will the countries catching Pacific saury cooperate to save the fishery?
We received some positive news when members of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) held a dialogue meeting of scientists and managers from Aug. 28-Sept. 2 and made progress in developing an interim harvest control rule (HCR) for Pacific saury, an important stock which remains heavily overfished. From a technical standpoint, there’s no question that an internationally-adopted HCR could be successful. But there’s more work to be done and adopting the HCR requires members to cooperate and potentially compromise to reach an agreement. It will be important for members like Japan to continue to demonstrate their leadership in progressing this work.
First the good news: NPFC members are on their way to developing an interim HCR tested via a short-cut method of Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE). At the meeting, held with some participants in person (myself included) in Vanuatu and others online, we narrowed down some options and filled in gaps to enable a simulation to be run.
On the scientific front, the group agreed the simulation will use three operating models to represent different states of nature: a reference case and two sensitivity cases representing higher and lower levels of stock productivity. Importantly, the group added missing details to quantify the management objectives to recover the stock (prioritized objective), avoid an unsustainable state of the stock after it is recovered (secondary objective) and achieve high and stable catch (tertiary objective).
The group also made choices to narrow down the options that will be tested, agreeing to use a target reference point based on BMSY. At The Ocean Foundation, we continue to urge the members to adopt a target reference point that is 1.2 times BMSY, to preserve saury’s role in the ecosystem as a forage fish and food for other commercial species, like albacore tuna. And, the group narrowed the list of HCR types that will be tested to two: a sliding scale/hockey stick HCR where fishing mortality is adjusted linearly based on estimated biomass (with and without constraints on the maximum change in total allowable catch), and simply for comparison purposes, a constant catch HCR. It’s important to note that sliding scale HCRs are among the most commonly used in fisheries around the world and can be highly successful, as exemplified by those HCRs for north Atlantic and north Pacific albacore tunas, Canadian sablefish and Indian Ocean bigeye tuna.
Given all of this, members of the NPFC should feel confident about their progress. However, they will have to continue to cooperate and compromise, if needed, to keep to their schedule of recommending an interim HCR when the dialogue meeting resumes in January. Then members are tasked with adopting one at the annual Commission meeting in April. The plight of Pacific saury – and its importance to north Pacific food webs and coastal economies – is too critical to postpone action.
After that, it will be key for members to finish the job. After all, the short-term HCR is just the first goal. The Commission must make good on its pledge to develop a management procedure tested via a full MSE that takes into account a wider range of uncertainties. That would really demonstrate members’ commitment to putting the Pacific saury on the path to long-term sustainability that provides a stable and profitable fishery.
Author——————————-
Nilmawati
Regional Sustainable Tuna Policy Coordinator, WWF Coral Triangle Program
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This week, as the 19th Scientific Committee (SC) of WCPFC convenes, a new study can help inform the ongoing evaluation of proposed management measures for skipjack, bigeye and yellowfin tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO).
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With the landmark adoption of a harvest strategy for skipjack last year, the Scientific Committee for the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) can continue the momentum to ensure sound harvest strategies are similarly applied for other key tuna stocks in the WCPO – notably for bigeye and yellowfin.
Yellowfin tuna is a highly-valued economic commodity for many countries in the Pacific. In 2020, the Philippines exported a total of 186,166 metric tons of tuna product, of which yellowfin comprised 40%, while 48% of all tuna caught in Indonesia’s archipelagic waters were yellowfin. Meanwhile, yellowfin tuna became Vietnam’s most important wild-capture export product in 2022 (nearly 18,000 metric tons).
As harvest strategies may call for catch reductions at times, it is important to acknowledge and understand the multi-sectoral implications of implementing such harvest strategies, especially for the livelihoods of millions of fisherfolk (over 90% of the fisherfolk in Indonesia and Philippines are considered small-scale) many of whom rely heavily on tuna fisheries, as well as Member States’ economies. As a highly migratory species, the yellowfin tuna stock that spawns and feeds in the archipelagic waters of Indonesia and the Philippines travels a vast range that encompasses most of the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, adding additional complexity to their management.
With little known about the potential costs and benefits of implementing harvest strategies for the Southeast Asian countries, WWF worked with a team of modelling experts led by Dr Megan Bailey of Dalhousie University to model the impact of four potential approaches to fishery management that would help sustain and rebuild bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks. The four candidate harvest strategies are:
By modelling the multi-species and multi-gear fisheries in WCPFC’s jurisdiction, the study seeks to help stakeholders understand the “true costs” and ensuing trade-offs intersecting socio-economic, biological and ecological impacts of a harvest strategy, as a first step to preparing for them. This can then lead to recommendations on how to address the potential trade-offs.
In June this year, as part of Sustainable Tuna Partnership 2 project my colleagues and I convened with Ciara Willis, a representative of Dr. Bailey’s team, and other fisheries scientists and officials from Indonesia, Philippines and Viet Nam to gather the information needed for this simulation study. Initial results from the simulation study have already produced projected potential benefits of implementing harvest strategies. It demonstrates that the overall sum of profits per country is greater under all harvest strategy scenarios than under current management, in addition to enabling sustainable catch and healthy yellowfin and bigeye spawning stock biomass in the future. With more accurate data inputs, the model could more accurately map out possible scenarios of what it would give (and take) to sustain the yellowfin tuna stock in the region.
Considering the study’s result as well as the significance of yellowfin tuna for the economy and livelihoods of coastal communities in Indonesia, Philippines and Viet Nam, representatives from the three countries have agreed that there is an urgent need for regional harvest strategies specific to yellowfin tuna.
On 16 August, the 19th Scientific Committee of WCPFC began a week-long meeting to discuss proposed management measures for tropical tunas in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. In ongoing discussions this week, Indonesia spoke to the shared interests of Viet Nam, Indonesia and the Philippines of ensuring sustainability of yellowfin tuna stocks in the region.
Through continued regional dialogue and greater scientific understanding provided by this “true costs” study, we look forward to the WCPFC acting upon its prior commitments in the earlier agreed work plans for adopting a harvest strategy that supports sustainable yellowfin tuna.
Author——————————-
David Gershman
Officer, International Fisheries
✉️
Pacific fishery managers just received a dose of good news: The management procedure for skipjack tuna – the largest tuna fishery in the world – was run for the first time and works as expected.
This should comfort the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), which still needs to agree that it will implement the output of the management procedure.
The harvest strategy approach to managing fisheries reduces uncertainty by creating pre-agreed rules to adjust fishing levels that account for variability in the natural system and errors in the way rules are implemented. Scientists, industry representatives and managers around the Pacific have described how management procedures, also called harvest strategies, can contribute to an abundant and sustainable future for the region’s fisheries. Click here to watch a short video describing the benefits of the harvest strategy approach for the region.
But, as with anything new, a certain level of anxiety might be expected. When the WCPFC crossed a milestone last year by adopting a management procedure for skipjack tuna on an interim basis, it purposely stopped short of establishing a direct link between the output of the management procedure and the setting of effort and catch in the skipjack purse seine and pole and line fisheries. Some managers said they needed more time to get comfortable with the concept. But without that link, some of the chief benefits of a management procedure will go unrealized, including the predictability and transparency in the setting of catches.
Now, WCPFC scientists have run the management procedure for the first time. In a paper to the WCFPC Scientific Committee, which begins its annual meeting August 16, they are reporting that all of the components of the management procedure worked just fine. There were no surprises either in the technical aspect of running the procedure, nor in its output.
Because the assessment element of the management procedure found that current skipjack stock status is within the recent range (that is, at 42 percent of unfished levels), the management procedure sets fishing conditions at ‘status quo’ levels. This is welcome news since it fulfills one of the key objectives of the management procedure.
Although the scientists suggested several pieces of work to continue improving the management procedure for the WCPFC Scientific Committee to consider, it’s important that the Scientific Committee sends a clear recommendation that managers should implement the output of the management procedure in 2024 without delay.
It’s critical the Commission demonstrates its leadership at its annual meeting in December by creating that automatic link between the output of the management procedure and the setting of catch and effort in the skipjack fishery. The Commission is already scheduled to renegotiate its tropical tuna measure. That negotiation offers the perfect opportunity to insert language into the measure (CMM 2021-01) to automatically implement the management procedure, effective January 1, 2024.
Author——————————-
David Gershman
Officer, International Fisheries
✉️
Next week, decisions affecting the biggest tuna fishery in the world will be front and center again for States that participate in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC).
A little more than half a year after adopting a management procedure (MP) for skipjack tuna, WCPFC members are getting ready for the first in a series of discussions that should be used to address a critical piece of unfished business, namely to ensure that the newly agreed MP is implemented on the water. The first workshop, to be held virtually June 28-29, will focus on identifying scientific analyses and sharing initial views to advance a discussion on creating hard limits and allocation frameworks for the high seas purse seine fishery, which represented about 14 percent of the days fished in the western and central Pacific’s $2.6 billion purse seine fishery in 2021. It will be followed by a second workshop in October. These two workshops will set the table for the renegotiation of the WCPFC’s tropical tuna conservation and management measure (the latest iteration being CMM 2021-01) at December’s annual meeting.
What’s critical for WCPFC is to ensure the discussion of allocation adheres to the output of the skipjack management procedure. And there’s no better way to do that than to establish a binding commitment to implement the management procedure. When it was adopted in 2022, the management procedure included all of most important elements to maintain the skipjack stock at a healthy and productive level, except one: WCPFC stopped short of establishing a direct link between the management procedure and the setting of effort and catch in the skipjack pole and line and purse seine fisheries. While the management procedure will calculate allowable catch and effort levels based on model estimates of population size, there is no mandate to apply them on the water. Without this link, some of the chief benefits of a management procedure will go unrealized, including catch level predictability and transparency.
Allocation of fishing rights is an issue vexing other tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations and it has been raised as a subject deserving attention from WCPFC members for many years. WCPFC manages the skipjack tuna purse seine fishery by effort control; CMM 2021-01 includes limits on the number of days that a fleet can fish on the high seas, with an exemption to the fleets of Small Island Developing States in recognition of their right to develop their fisheries. Those limits that exist are without prejudice to future decisions and WCPFC has committed to transitioning to a more equitable framework for high seas fishing that includes allocating hard limits among all members and participating territories.
Agreeing to fishing limits that all members can live by is of course necessary for strong and accountable fisheries management. The tasks of developing an allocation framework and management procedure for skipjack should be seen as two sides of the same coin. Having a management procedure in place should facilitate discussions on allocation because the management procedure will define the total amount of fishing activity that can be permitted in any given year. The question that allocation answers is how to divide that up. Answering that question is easier when the total likely fishing level is known, thanks to the MP.
But here is where the danger lies for WCPFC. Allocation opens up a contentious discussion over who gets what and where. Already some members are suggesting proposals that would increase high seas effort from current levels, while others are concerned the management procedure might have to be revisited in light of how the allocation discussion plays out.
As members advocate for their own national interests in the coming months, they should take heed that they all share a common interest in a skipjack fishery that is healthy and sustainable for the long term. The management procedure that was adopted has been found via computer simulation to achieve those objectives. The workshop process offers WCPFC members an opportunity to pick up where they left off last year. They should seize it and renew their commitment to a more transparent, predictable and science-based approach. Then, when members need to make decisions at their December annual meeting, they should agree to insert language into CMM 2021-01 to automatically implement the management procedure, effective January 1, 2024. This will ensure the output of the management procedure is respected, a goal all members should support.
FULL VIDEO
ABBREVIATED TRAILER