Even as Bigeye Stocks Crash, Wespac Wants to Raise Longliners’ Catch Share

posted in: December 2009, Fisheries, Marine | 0

A decade ago, Daniel Pauly, one of the leading scientists in the field of fisheries management, coined a term: Fishing down the food web. This describes what happens when the large marine predators are overfished and their numbers decline, while populations of their prey explode. Those prey fish are in turn exploited to the point that their numbers shrink and then the bulk of the catch is made up of the fish that make up the next-lower trophic level. Taken to its logical conclusion, fishing down the food web ends up with catches of plankton-feeders and detritivores that, in earlier times, would have been scorned and discarded.

At the October meeting of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (Wespac), guest speaker Jeff Polovina, a scientist with the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (and one of the most prominent names in the field of marine science today), discussed trends in Hawai`i fisheries – and in several respects, they match up well with what Pauly described.

“When you look at longline catches from observer data, the catch rates have shown a slight downward trend for most fish caught over the last decade – tunas, sharks, billfish,” Polovina told the council. But one group of fish species – the “other” category on observer forms, shows an upward trend, he noted.

“Who are these ‘others’?” Polovina asked, then answered his own question with a slide that pictured five species. The toothsome mahimahi was instantly recognizable. The rest – lancetfish, snake mackerel, walu, and sickle pomfret – are still fairly exotic today, but, if Pauly is to be believed, several of them may be making more frequent appearances in local markets.

Yet, apart from mahimahi (Coryphaena hippurus) and sickle pomfret (Taractichthys steindachneri), these “other” fish pose some market challenges. The meat of the longnose lancetfish (Alepisaurus ferox) has been described as watery and gelatinous. Walu, also known as escolar (Lepidocybium flavobrunneum), might be a hard sell, too: while tasty (some try to market it as “white tuna”), its oily flesh has caused it to be nicknamed the Ex-Lax fish. Snake mackerel (Gempylus serpens), has little market value. If it is retained and sold, it usually ends up in processed fish cake: its appearance alone can dampen the most robust appetite.

“We’re seeing a new face of the pelagic ecosystem,” Polovina said. “Snake mackerel catch rates have gone up 17.9 percent a year. Mahimahi catch rates doubled over the last decade, even though no one targets it.” Catch rates for escolar increased at a brisk rate of nearly 11 percent a year, according to Polovina’s data. For the higher trophic-level predators, however, catch rates were heading south over the same period. Albacore led the charge, with an annual catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) decline of more than 9 percent (although part of this decline may be attributed to a shift in targeting by the longline fleet). Striped marlin and bigeye tuna, high riders on the trophic scale, also saw significant declines in average annual CPUE (4.8 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively).

“The overall composition of the catch has changed,” Polovina said. “It used to be that 70 percent of the catch was made up of top trophic-level predators; now it’s about 40 percent. We’re seeing now a trophic cascade. The biomass of prey fish has increased its ratio. There’s an increase of faster-growing, shorter-lived animals. Used to be, they made up 20 percent of the catch. Now they’re 40 percent.” Research by Polovina (published in the Fishery Bulletin in September) shows that the lancetfish, which made up 10 percent of the total catch, in 2006 amounted to 20 percent – exceeding the catch of the fishery’s target, bigeye (17 percent of the catch).

The management issues posed by this change in catch composition are significant. In the past, Polovina noted, “there was a lot of focus on single species – for example, bigeye tuna – but we need to look at the whole ecosystem. Juvenile bigeye occupy a lower trophic level than adults, the same trophic level as mahimahi. So, will juvenile bigeye now have a better chance at survival because the top predators are removed? Or, now that there are these other competitors at the same trophic level as juveniles, will it be more difficult for bigeye juveniles to mature? We don’t know enough about these interactions, but it’s worth giving thought to.”

In a telephone interview, Polovina said that what’s occurring in Hawai`i differs in several respects from what Pauly was describing. “In Daniel’s approach, you’re sequentially depleting resources as you go further down the food web,” Polovina said. “Here, though, bigeye tuna still commands the highest price, still is the target of the fishery, but what’s happened is an increase in things that have no market value, like snake mackerel, lancetfish. You’re reducing the abundance of fish at the top of the food web, but are still fishing it.

“What Daniel characterized as fishing down the food web – you wipe out one tropic level and move down. Here, it’s a little like that, but the target species is still largely the bigeye.”

* * *
Big Trouble
For Bigeye

But how much longer can the bigeye be profitably targeted? In recent years, stock assessments of bigeye in the western and central Pacific suggest that the catch of bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) exceeds estimates of sustainable yields by from 50 percent to 100 percent.

Last December, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, based in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia, adopted a conservation and management measure (CMM-2008-01) with a goal of reducing fishing mortality of bigeye in 2011 by 30 percent from annual catch averages seen in the years 2001 through 2004. This, it was thought, would bring catches back to a level that was sustainable. (The measure is also intended to protect yellowfin tuna, which is not in as dire straits as bigeye but still in need of some protection.)

Now, however, according to the commission’s Scientific Committee, that goal of reducing catches of bigeye by 30 percent seems unattainable – indeed, according to the latest scientific reports, catch rates are likely to increase in 2009. Even if the 30 percent reduction could be achieved, it probably would not be sufficient to allow bigeye stocks to recover to healthy levels. Those were among the conclusions reached at the August meeting of the committee, held in Vanuatu. Supporting the findings was a report by John Hampton and Shelton Harley, WCPFC scientists, evaluating the effects of CMM-2008-01 on bigeye and yellowfin.

After reviewing fisheries data and analyzing it in relation to the restrictions imposed by the conservation measure, Hampton and Harley modeled bigeye population projections through the year 2018. Not only was the desired goal of a 30 percent catch reduction in bigeye unlikely to be achieved, they found, but also there was likely to be no reduction in the degree to which bigeye were being overfished. In 2007-2008, they reported, actual levels of overfishing of bigeye exceeded 2.0 – or twice the sustainable yield. That figure was far higher than the level of overfishing (around 1.4) that had been estimated to occur at the time the conservation measure was adopted last December.

Hampton and Harley gave three main reasons for the inability of the conservation measure to achieve its stated goal. First, given certain of the exclusions and loopholes in the provisions of the measure applicable to longliners, by 2011, the longline bigeye catch in the area under the commission’s jurisdiction (the so-called convention area) would be reduced by no more than 11 percent from the baseline (the average catch of longliners between 2001 and 2004). Second, under even the most conservative scenarios, purse seine effort (measured in terms of days spent fishing) will be similar to or exceed the historical high effort that occurred in 2005 and 2008. “[I]t is clear that even perfect implementation of all provisions of the CMM … will not meet the bigeye tuna objective … [of] achieving a 30 percent reduction in mortality in the purse seine fishery,” they write. Third, the conservation measure does not apply in the archipelagic waters of the western Pacific, where Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands all have active purse seine fisheries and where the take of juvenile bigeye is high.

Absent more stringent conservation measures, Hampton and Harley wrote, by 2018, bigeye tuna spawning biomass “is predicted to continue its decline.” By 2018, they wrote, actual spawning biomass of bigeye in the region – a measure of the reproductive potential of the fish – would be just 40 to 60 percent of what was needed to support the maximum sustainable yield of the purse seine and longline fisheries.

The report of the WCPFC Scientific Committee noted, “Not only have conditions deteriorated since the previous assessment, our view of past conditions is now more pessimistic,” given recent updated catch information from countries fishing in the region that had been missing from previous stock assessments.

In conclusion, the WCPFC Scientific Committee noted that “the combination of increased fishing mortality on bigeye tuna to levels well above [maximum sustainable yield] … and the inadequacy of CMM-2008-01 in reducing fishing mortality by 30 percent implies that stock biomass will continue to decline if … effective action is delayed.” Identifying and implementing management measures that can correct the deficiencies of CMM-2008-01, the committee said, is “the most urgent issue facing the commission with regard to managing the sustainability of target tuna stocks.”

At the next full meeting of the commission, to be held December 7-11 in Papeete, Tahiti, the full commission will take up a discussion of the Scientific Committee’s report.

* * *
But in Hawai`i,
An Increasing Quota

Under the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s conservation measure for bigeye tuna, the 2009 catch of the Hawai`i-based longline fleet was to be reduced 10 percent from the volume of bigeye caught in 2004, for a total catch of 3,763 metric tons of bigeye taken from waters within the WCPFC’s jurisdiction. According to scientists with NMFS’ Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, that quota was expected to have been reached by December 1. After that, to meet the huge holiday demand for ahi, the longliners would be constrained to fishing in the waters of the Eastern Pacific (east of 150° West meridian). There, bigeye are also dangerously close to being in an overfishing state, but given the catch trends for 2009, the annual catch limit of 500 metric tons for U.S. longliners set by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission will probably not be met.

Still, even if the bigeye in the Eastern Pacific remain available, in the past, the fourth quarter of the year has historically been the poorest season for catching bigeye in that region. From 2005 through 2008, the fourth-quarter catch of Eastern Pacific bigeye is just 4 percent of the total annual bigeye catch taken from the Eastern Pacific by the Hawai`i longliners.

As Environment Hawai`i reported in September, the Hawai`i Longline Association anticipated the possibility that it could be facing a late-year closure of its most productive bigeye grounds under the WCPFC conservation measure. To mitigate that, it entered into an agreement with the government of American Samoa, under which HLA vessels would amount to a charter fleet of the government. With the WCPFC conservation measure giving American Samoa and other small island nations a minimum quota of 2,000 metric tons of bigeye – and no limit whatsoever if they were undertaking ‘responsible’ development of their fisheries – the HLA evidently spied a loophole that could allow its members to continue fishing in the Western and Central Pacific well after the fleet had reached its 2009 limit, with the charter agreement giving HLA the right to take up to 1,500 metric tons of American Samoa’s allocation of bigeye.

The fly in the ointment came in July, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a draft rule that would have required any landings attributed to territorial quotas to be made in the territory. At the July meeting of Wespac, whose chairman, Sean Martin, is a founding member of the HLA, the council voted to have its staff develop amendments, for a vote in its October meeting, to the council’s Pelagics Fishery Management Plan that would clearly legitimize the sort of charter arrangements anticipated in the HLA-American Samoa agreement.

In the council’s meeting last month, the proposed amendments were discussed – without the participation of Martin, who recused himself. For the benefit of other council members, Fred Tucher, general counsel for the NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office, elaborated on Martin’s recusal: “Prior to the council meeting, I received a copy of a contract signed by [American Samoa council member] Ray Tulafono and James Cook [Martin’s business partner] on behalf of HLA.” The agenda item up for discussion would affect this agreement, he continued. Under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, he said, council members may participate in decisions, “provided the issue does not address a matter of primarily an individual concern.” In this case, he said, “Martin has decided to recuse himself.” (Tulafono, who sits on the council thanks to his governmental position and not as representative of private fishing interests, was not required to recuse himself, Tucher later explained.)

The document prepared by staff for the council’s consideration presented a range of options, from no-action (leaving the HLA-American Samoa agreement in a difficult legal position), to alternatives that provided explicit authority for such charter arrangements to vessels of any nation, with catch limits of 1,000 or 2,000 metric tons. (The unlimited catch allowed to WCPFC territories engaged in “responsible” fisheries development was briefly mentioned in the staff report: “This [no-limit] alternative would be most consistent with the wording of … CMM 2008-01; however, it seems irresponsible not to limit longline catches of bigeye by the Territories given the condition of the bigeye stock.”)

Advice from the council’s Pelagic Plan Team as well as its Scientific and Statistical Committee attempted to throw cold water on the proposal. With respect to quotas for the island territories, the SST wrote, “Given the continued decline of the status of the bigeye stock the SSC does not support any increase in bigeye catch by any entity … and declines to endorse any specific alternatives related to this draft [Fishery Management Plan] amendment.” The Plan Team, evidencing some doubt as to the claim in the agreement that the HLA charter agreement was “integral” to American Samoa’s domestic fleet, recommended that any amendment to the fishery management plan include criteria, “such as one that includes port of landing, recent history of landings, port of vessel servicing and vessel location office, for determining if vessels operating under domestic charter arrangements” are in fact “integral,” as required under the WCPFC conservation measure for bigeye.

In response to the Plan Team’s comments, the council staff included in its set of options one that would require charter vessels to make “at least three annual landings to offload catch in the ports of the chartering territory, if adequate infrastructure is available (as determined by the chartering territory) to make it commercially feasible.” However, if no landings are feasible in the first year “due to lack of infrastructure,” the requirement would not have to be met until the second year of the arrangement. (Given the damage from the September tsunami, it is unlikely that anyone would challenge a determination that in 2009, at least, American Samoa’s infrastructure would be incapable of accommodating landings from the Hawai`i longliners.)

Council member Peter Young expressed his dismay over the proposed change in the Pelagics FMP that would increase fishing effort on a species dangerously close to overfished condition – if not already in overfished territory. “We began this with a discussion of responsible fisheries development … as a reason for considering the expansion of the harvest of bigeye in the area,” he said.

“Then we had the discussion of vessel chartering, and the recusal of the chair, and mention of an agreement of some type between HLA and American Samoa… I feel like I’m connecting dots. It looks like what we’re trying to do is increase the allocation to HLA to harvest bigeye with an additional allocation of 1,000 to 2,000 metric tons per territory and they may not even have to land the fish in American Samoa, because, if there’s no infrastructure for the longline fleet to land there, they don’t have to do that… We know the earthquake and tsunami devastated harbor facilities, so it’s not likely they’ll be landed there next year. There are no longliners in Guam except a training vessel, and we know they don’t have facilities in Guam and CNMI [Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands]. If bigeye come to Honolulu, I don’t know how that helps the territories….

“I don’t see why we’re even suggesting the next step when bigeye is the targeted fish, because we’re obligated to prevent overfishing, and when there’s an overfished status, we have an obligation to rebuild stocks, not harvest more.”

Council member Dave Itano, said, “I just don’t see the economics of it, developing a bigeye fishery in American Samoa or Guam.” Referring to the fact that the fish would have to be shipped out of the territories to market, he continued: “Having to land fish locally, especially in American Samoa and maybe Guam, for the quality of fish, it doesn’t add up economically to me… It just seems rather a stretch. This is painful.”

Stephen Haleck, a council member from American Samoa, made a pitch for the chartering agreement. “In American Samoa, Chicken of the Sea cannery has closed already…. True, our infrastructure was damaged by the tsunami, but that doesn’t mean we are not looking to rebuild. From American Samoa’s point of view, we’re looking at this chartering agreement as a very good tool for us to receive funding” – HLA agreed to pay $225,000 to help out with harbor improvements and other projects – “and also as a means to rebuild our infrastructure, provide jobs, training for our people. And that’s why we have signed an agreement already.”

Blame it on the purse seiners

Manny Duenas, council member from Guam, objected to Itano’s characterization of Guam. Guam has “the largest trans-shipment port in the Pacific for foreign fleets. We’re very familiar with trans-shipment, three to four daily flights to Japan,” Duenas said. “We do have capacity in Guam, we just do not have the fish. But CNMI does, so maybe we can partner.”

As for the troubled state of bigeye, Duenas blamed it on the purse seiners. “Look at 2008 records,” he said. “The purse seine fleet nearly doubled. They’re up to 55,000 metric tons over the last eight years. Nothing has been done on their end for conservation, but they got big money.

“I’m not happy with what’s being discussed today. The only fishing group being regulated under the quota system is the longline fleet. The purse seine fleet is not being regulated this way. Who are you kidding, scientists, when you pick on the longliners?”

Under the WCPFC conservation measure for bigeye, Duenas noted, “Territories are not given a limit. There is no quota.” Still, with the recent establishment of several large monument areas in territorial seas around CNMI and American Samoa, and the expansion of military closed areas off Guam, “we’re shut out of our waters.”

“I don’t think anyone in this room has a right to point to territories and say we’re not deserving of this. People on this council had the chance to attack purse seiners, but all the effort was focused on the longline fleet.”

William Robinson, administrator of NMFS’ Pacific Islands Regional Office in Honolulu, attempted to defend both WCPFC and the conservation measure it adopted.

“One comment on WCPFC,” he said. “It’s really an imperfect organization. And it’s dominated by geopolitics, in that the majority of its membership is made up of small island developing states and non-voting participating territories who have clearly expressed a view geopolitically that their economic development as nations depends in part on their ability to develop their own fisheries. Given the scientific advice that we need to reduce effort by as much as 30 percent to fish at a sustainable level, clearly, for the majority of members, that reduction is going to come out of the developed nations, not out of aspirations of small island developing states.

“That’s very difficult to deal with in real world, but that’s the Catch-22 we’re dealing with. To the extent [small island developing states] rapidly develop their fisheries, either reductions come from developed nations, or we’re not going to achieve fishing goals at all. It’s a very difficult situation.”

Nor could Robinson let slide Duenas’ remarks on the purse seine fleet. “I don’t want to wade into purse seine waters,” he said, “but I would point out that the U.S. position was to take them off the water for two months, but nobody else would agree to that…. The [National Marine] Fisheries Service is supportive of the Conservation and Management Measure, which clearly recognizes that SIDS [small island developing states] and territories do have the right to responsibly develop their fishery without significant constraints. We support that….

“But I want to identify one issue that’s somewhat problematic for us. That is the issue of what it means to operate as an integral part of a domestic fleet. … The problematic aspect right now for the Fisheries Service is, what is the minimum threshold for operating as an integral part of a chartering fleet. Our concern is kind of precedential, in the sense that in the first place, … a reasonable interpretation of integral is some sort of essential nexus, such as landing, provisioning, etc. We feel that’s important that those kinds of requirements be included….

“What we don’t want to see as members of WCPFC, we don’t want to set a precedent or create a model that Chinese Taipei or Taiwan or Korea can come in and think that they can write a check to somebody, and that in and of itself makes us integral, and therefore we can just keep fishing wherever we normally fish and land wherever we normally land. We suspect some of that is occurring anyway, but our position is that it should stop. The contribution of a charter fleet should be significant. … We don’t want to open the door to wholesale abuse of chartering, which is why we’ve pushed so hard to have these operational conditions.”

When the turn came for members of the public to comment, Jim Cook, owner of several longline vessels with Sean Martin, weighed in. “There’s been a lot of discussion that turns on the definition of integral,” he said. “It’s curious to me that the WCPFC did not enter into discourse on this definition. They granted island communities their unlimited or 2,000 ton quota and left the rest up to them… Here we’ve been talking about integral, and benefits accruing, but it seems to me it’s up to the territories to decide what’s integral, and not the U.S. government. I think we’re all islanders, we’re all from the United States, we’re all integral.”

The next day, the council voted on the issue. Once more, the purse seine fleet was vilified, with frequent mention made of the $18 million a year that the U.S. government pays in foreign aid to island nations so that the U.S. purse seiners can fish in their waters.

Robinson of NMFS attempted to address Young’s repeated concerns that the possible increased fishing mortality of bigeye tuna allowed under the FMP amendment would undermine the goals of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. “Under the national standard,” Robinson said, “basically, because the United States is a small part of the overall mortality… the Magnuson Act defers to the regional fishery management organization” – in this case, the WCPFC – “as long as the RFMO is addressing the overfishing issue. And because the U.S. catch is a very small percentage, 3 to 4 percent, of the total, we defer to the RFMO… With the conservation and management measure, if you follow through with a 30 percent reduction, there would be a significant reduction in mortality… If you look at the exemptions of small island developing states and territories, there’s an expectation there may be some responsible development in those fisheries which would add some mortality back in. But what these proposals do, whether it’s ours or another, it simply adds a little bit more mortality back into the equation. Maybe you don’t get the full 30 percent mortality, you get something less, but overall you should still get significant reduction in mortality.”

In the end, the motion to allow Guam, American Samoa, and CNMI to manage up to 2,000 metric tons of bigeye catch per year through charter arrangements passed the council by a wide margin. The final vote: 9 in favor, 2 opposed (Laura Thielen and Peter Young), 1 recusal (Martin), and 1 abstention (Robinson).

For Further Reading

The September 2009 edition of Environment Hawai`i contains a more thorough discussion of the HLA-American Samoa charter agreement. The article, “Hawai`i Longliners Attempt an End Run around Bigeye Quotas in Western Pacific,” is available online at the Environment Hawai`i website: [url=http://www.environment-hawaii.org]www.environment-hawaii.org[/url] Access is free to current subscribers. Others wishing to view the article may do so on payment of $10 for a two-day pass to the archives.

— Patricia Tummons

Volumn 20, Number 6 December 2009

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