$10 Billion Pacific Skipjack Tuna Fishery Could Soon Be Better Protected
The western and central Pacific Ocean is home to the world’s largest tuna fishery, with commercially valuable fish populations, including skipjack tuna, worth billions of dollars each year. These stocks sustain livelihoods across the Pacific and beyond, and are vital to the health and balance of the ocean ecosystem.
The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), the regional body charged with setting rules for fishing these waters, will meet in Da Nang, Vietnam, from 28 November to 3 December, where it has an opportunity to significantly improve how tunas—mainly skipjack— are managed to ensure future sustainability.
Skipjack is the third-most caught fish in the world, with 1.7 million tons—worth up to US$9.65 billion at the final point of sale— caught in this region in 2018. The skipjack population is healthy but has become more depleted over time, which is one reason WCPFC and its members made a forward-thinking commitment to a modernized management method known as a management procedure. After years of thorough simulations of this approach, this year the Commission can take action to fulfil its promise.
Management procedures, which are also known as harvest strategies, are pre-agreed frameworks for making fisheries management decisions such as setting limits on catch or fishing effort. This science-based approach helps ensure sustainability by regulating fisheries based on computertested models that estimate how many fish are in the water and how many can be caught without overfishing.
Today, most international fisheries management requires timeconsuming and contentious negotiations among fishing nations that can take time away from other pressing issues, and often prioritizes short-term catch levels versus long-term sustainability.
WCPFC shouldn’t delay modernizing management
Following a meeting in August, WCPFC appears on track to adopt its skipjack management procedure next month but first must overcome one potential obstacle that could reduce the strategy’s efficacy: In an August meeting of the Science Management Dialogue, the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), the eight countries and territory of Tokelau that contain some of the world’s most productive skipjack fishing grounds, announced that they want to delay implementing the harvest strategy for up to six years. The PNA group has said it supports the management procedure but sought the delay to give member States more comfort in the management procedure before applying it. This position is echoed by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), which is made up of 17 countries in the region and has submitted a formal proposal to delay implementation.