Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Tuna treaty near
after isle forum

Pacific nations have worked for
six years to form an agency to
manage and conserve
the lucrative industry

Shark-finning ban bill advances

By Mary Adamski
Star-Bulletin

There's no shortage yet of the four tuna species that migrate throughout the Pacific, and an international pact aims to perpetuate that bountiful harvest even if it means fishing quotas and closed seasons on the high seas.

Delegates from 28 Pacific countries yesterday concluded a weeklong conference on fishing at the Hawaii Convention Center.

Meetings have been under way for six years to hammer out a treaty that would establish a commission to oversee management and conservation of the resources in the $1.7 billion Pacific tuna industry.

The proposed commission is envisioned as the agency by which the fishing nations would set standards to ensure that "the capacity and fishing effort ... do not outstrip the numbers of fish," said Tucker Scully, director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Ocean Affairs.

"We have a framework in place; there is some fine tuning to be done before we finally adopt the convention," said conference chairman Satya Nandan of Fiji. He took an optimistic outlook in his closing remarks, projecting that the treaty will be completed and signed in Fiji at the planned final session Aug. 30 to Sept. 5.

But he acknowledged there are major areas that have not been resolved.

One major sticking point that would strike a sympathetic chord in even the casual fisherman: the desire to keep a favorite fishing hole secret, especially from the competition. It's a concern for the No. 1 Pacific fishing power, Japan.

Some nations, including Japan, balked at a proposed data-collecting procedure by which a fishing vessel would report its catch to the commission. They fear it means leading the competition to their lucrative fishing grounds since electronic monitoring equipment already pinpoints a ship's location.

Junichiro Okamoto, director of the Japan Fisheries Agency's Far Seas Fisheries Division, said catches should be reported to the vessel's flag country, which would pass on the numbers to the commission.

Japan is one of the nations that favors an escape clause, allowing any nation to "opt out" when it disagrees with limits or standards set by the commission.

Other nations, however, believe that would defeat the purpose of the commission.

The first step toward protecting Hawaii's fishing industry when the treaty takes effect is under way in an information-collecting effort, said John Sibert, director of the University of Hawaii pelagic fisheries research program.

"Some people in this room believe there will have to be quotas set and the quotas will apply to everyone as they do under similar arrangements in the Atlantic," Sibert said.

"The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council is working to develop a statistical data base on what Hawaii fisherman actually catch, something that is not known at the moment.

"So should a quota ever come into force, Hawaii fishermen will get their fair share of the pie."

The conference was also delicate because Taiwan, the second largest fishing entity in the Pacific, participates in the treaty conference sessions, and China does not recognize Taiwan as a separate country.

Taiwan delegates are seated as representing "Chinese Taipei."

Scully said that while the United States does not officially recognize Taiwan as a state, it does see that Taiwan is "one of the major fishing powers... in the region.

"So if we are going to achieve our objective for an effective system for managing the resources, we want to make sure those vessels are bound by the obligations."