‘Money Games’ Thwart Overhaul of Bigeye Tuna Protection Measure

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At the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Management Commission (WCPFC) meeting last month in Apia, Samoa, the griping was constant and everywhere. In the hallways, at lunch tables, during tea breaks, on the shuttle rides back to hotels …

“The name should be changed to Western and Central Pacific Money Games,” one distraught attendee was heard saying to another. Indeed, the general unwillingness of commission members to suffer any more economic losses from measures aimed at conserving bigeye tuna stocks repeatedly halted negotiations throughout the week.

By the meeting’s close, the commission had passed not a single measure to reduce catches of bigeye tuna, a stock whose spawning biomass is now reported to be just 16 percent of its original, un-fished level. What’s more, the commission also failed to adopt a measure to reduce any disproportionate burden its current tropical tuna conservation and management measure, CMM 2013-01, has on small island developing states (SIDS). That means a planned five-month closure of purse seine fishing around fish aggregating devices (FADS) in waters surrounding commission member countries will not go into effect this year or the next.

And without the five-month FAD closure, CMM 2013-01 will fail to return bigeye spawning capacity to anything approaching a sustainable level and the stock will continue to decline, according to scientific modeling done for the commission.

At the meeting’s close, incoming commission chair Rhea Moss-Christian lamented the lack of progress that had been made. (Moss-Christian took over the meeting in the middle of the last day because outgoing chair Charles Karnella had scheduled an early flight home.)

“It is unfortunate we are on the last day and we haven’t resolved a lot of issues,” she said before suggesting that commission members try to reach some middle ground before the commission meets again at the end of the year in Bali, Indonesia.

She said addressing the tropical tuna issue was really the commission’s main task.

“I note there is a measure of disappointment and” — for those hoping to avoid greater quota cuts — “mild satisfaction. I don’t think it’s something the commission should feel comfortable with,” she said.

Bubba Cook of the World Wildlife Fund, speaking on behalf of his organization, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Greenpeace, had harsher words.

Commission members cannot continue to engage in intractable posturing, he said, pointing out that they had also failed to reach agreement on proposed measures to increase protections for Pacific albacore, to improve the commission’s compliance system, or to establish a harvest regime that would eventually include stock-specific target reference points triggering certain actions if they were exceeded.

The harvest regime proposal was merely “a plan to develop a plan,” but even that appeared to be too much of a commitment for some members, he continued.

“If we can’t agree on something that simple, maybe there is no hope in the process,” he said.

Although the commission did manage to approve a measure to increase protections for severely overfished Pacific bluefin tuna, Cook took issue with one member state (the United States), which had pointed to that as an accomplishment.

“It’s really hard to call that a success,” Cook said. If it takes driving a stock down to four percent of its original spawning biomass for the commission to act, maybe it should suspend further meetings and wait until other stocks reach a critical state, so as to force the commission to do something, he said.

“Until then, we continue to waste everyone’s time,” he said.

Potential for Success

Last year, when the commission’s scientific committee released its assessment suggesting that the Western and Central Pacific bigeye tuna stock had likely become overfished, several conservation groups called for strong and swift action to be taken at the commission’s December meeting.

Greenpeace called for a ban on all FAD fishing, a reduction in both longline and purse seine quotas, and the closure to tuna fishing of all high seas pockets, among other things. (The high seas pockets are areas of international water completely surrounded by territorial waters.) The Pew Charitable Trusts focused more on CMM 2013-01’s ineffective FAD closure requirement. Despite the required four-month FAD closure last year, purse seine catches of bigeye reached an all-time high. Pew suggested that the commission replace the FAD closure provisions with FAD set limits that, according to scientific advice, would reduce fishing mortality by 36 percent compared to 2008-2011 average levels.

But by the time the commission met in December, it had received only a single proposal to amend CMM 2013-01. A group of eight commission member countries called the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, or PNA, had submitted a joint proposal with Tokelau that called for a broad range of management measures, including a limit on the number of FADS that can be deployed annually and a ban on night-setting during months when FADS are not to be used.

When it came time to discuss amending CMM 2013-01, the United States and the European Union both argued that since it was adopted just a year ago, more time should be allowed to see if it will effectively reduce fishing mortality.

A month before the commission meeting, its scientific committee issued a paper exploring the likelihood that CMM 2013-01, unamended, would increase bigeye spawning biomass to an acceptable level. In short, the committee found that maybe the measure could succeed, but it couldn’t say for sure.

One of the main problems with assessing the measure is that its “ ‘either/or’ choices, exemptions, or exclusions and decisions yet to be made” make it impossible to predict future levels of purse seine effort and longline catch, the committee states.

For example, when it comes to purse seine fishing on FADS, countries have a choice of increasing the number of months vessels can’t fish on FADS or reducing the number of FAD sets they make.

“There are a number of outcomes in terms of actual future catch-and-effort levels. We have made hopefully sensible assumptions, but there is obviously no certainty that they are correct,” the committee states.

Still, the committee report offers some hope: Based on recruitment rates from the past few years, CMM 2013-01 could potentially reduce the risk of overfishing bigeye to an “acceptable” four percent. At the WCPFC meeting, committee scientist John Hampton clarified that this scenario assumed that by the end of 2017, the five-month FAD closure predicted in CMM 2013-01 would be in effect.

Disproportionate Burden

The problem with pinning the success of CMM 2013-01 on the five-month FAD closure is that the measure includes a loophole that could prevent the extension of FAD closures beyond four months. Basically, it states, if the commission fails to pass a measure addressing the disproportionate burden that SIDS are shouldering as a result of the provisions within CMM 2013-01, the five-month FAD closure won’t happen. SIDS, many of whose economies rely heavily on the sale of fishing access rights to foreign purse seine vessels, have argued that CMM 2013-01’s limits on FAD fishing by those vessels imposes an unfair economic burden.

Although the commission had held a workshop ahead of the December meeting to try to address the disproportionate burden issue, it had clearly not been resolved, given some of the discussion within the small working group on tropical tunas.

A report from the workshop noted that Tokelau, at least, suffers a loss of $400,000 a month for each month closed to FAD fishing. Even so, Russell Smith, head of the U.S. delegation, questioned whether enough information had been provided to quantify the actual burden on all SIDS.

“We still haven’t answered the fundamental questions of disproportionate burden: What are the benefits, costs, across all CCMs? Which of the SIDS get impacts? That has to be quantified, then we have to figure out how to alleviate,” he said.

The European Union’s Angela Martini added, “Despite what is being said that it’s so clear there is a disproportionate burden, I don’t think we agree on that.”

She noted that despite the claimed economic impacts of FAD closures, some SIDS suffered no loss in the number of fishing days they sold and, in fact, the price of those days had gone up.

“The price of a vessel day at the moment is so high, several parties are considering not buying those days. It has nothing to do with the [FAD] closure. … It’s not like less days have been sold at less price. … The arguments put forward are not so straightforward in our opinion,” she said.

She argued for the development of a methodology that assesses the actual burden SIDS endure as a result of CMMs, but discussions toward that end eventually led to a long, uncomfortable silence.

In fact, all attempts in the tropical tuna small working group to clarify limits on fleet capacity, to address the disproportionate burden issue, or to refine longline and purse seine fishing measures ended in one long silence after another.

Lackluster Effort

The tropical tuna small working group met three times during the course of the five-day WCPFC meeting. As one U.S. delegate put it, there seemed to be no appetite in the room for compromise. With negotiations repeatedly hitting dead ends, outgoing chair Charles Karnella halted the working group’s discussions on the second to last day of the meeting.

Despite the apparent gridlock, though, some attendees believed more could have been achieved. If the commission had had two more days, then maybe more progress could have been made on tropical tunas, one delegate told Environment Hawaii. And he was not alone in thinking that at least some of the limited progress was due to insufficient effort. As the days ticked by, Karnella noted repeatedly during the plenary that the commission was running out of time to decide on a revised topical tuna measure, yet he did not convene a working group for that agenda item until the middle of the week. And in the group’s three meetings, some attendees said, Karnella seemed less inclined to facilitate discussion and more apt to leave the situation deadlocked.

On the final day, as some delegates started again pointing fingers at one another for the failure to adopt a new tuna measure, one of Japan’s main negotiators suggested that the entire commission was at fault.

“Last year, we had a five-day meeting, but we started the discussion [on tunas] one day before the meeting and we continued the meeting on the last day. Compared to last year’s effort, this year, how much effort have we allocated for this discussion? Maybe only one or two days,” he said. “It’s not wise to criticize each other. It’s our fault.”

Indeed, when Karnella asked on the last day whether it would be worth reconvening the tropical tuna working group, no one spoke up.

A Bright Spot?

In the end, the only significant changes to CMM 2013-01 dealt with the provision of operational catch-and-effort data by six Asian countries that have consistently cited domestic restrictions as their reason for providing only aggregated catch data. Without operational data, many have said the commission is unable to create robust stock assessments.

Based on a proposal from the Forum Fisheries Agency (a consortium of Pacific island states), Japan, China, Taiwan (or Chinese Taipei), Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines all agreed to start providing operational data. However, the agreement came with several conditions: The data would only be provided for fishing in waters south of 20 degrees North, or roughly the same latitude as Hawai`i, and would not include catch by artisanal, small-scale vessels. Also, the commission would keep the data confidential.

One of the more concerning conditions was one that gave a three-year grace period to any of the countries that had a “practical difficulty” in providing 2015 operational data. Such countries would have to supply the information only after domestic constraints were lifted. Indonesia’s “grace period” would be indefinite.

The EU’s Martini asked how a three-year grace period would help, given that CMM 2013-01 expires in 2017.

Japan’s delegate said the condition was simply “the outcome of compromise of almost 22 members.” He added that, actually, only very few countries will use the grace period.

Smith of the U.S. delegation acknowledged the measure as a step forward on the data issue, but stressed that it was, unfortunately, a small one.

“I’m hoping this is a temporary solution and we can continue to work to make the data provided … more robust and achieve this in a rapid fashion,” he said.

Martini added, “To say the added value of this is very limited is an understatement.”

However, she, along with the rest of the commission, supported the adoption of the measure.

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Limits to Longline Gear,
Plans to Protect Sharks

Sharks received a bit more protection under a new measure approved by the commission. More might have been achieved but for resistance from certain countries that wish to continue shark finning.

The FFA had proposed in November a measure that would have required detailed catch reporting, compliance with international shark conservation measures, and the landing of sharks caught with their fins attached, among other things. However, after tough negotiations in small working groups at the WCPFC meeting, the FFA wound up putting forth a “very simplistic measure that would take us to the next level of the conservation of sharks in the Western and Central Pacific,” said one delegate from Palau, an FFA member country.

The scaled-back measure has two parts. First, it prohibits longline vessels from using certain types of branch lines and leaders. Second, for longline fisheries that target sharks, the measure requires commission members to develop management plans that include specific authorizations to fish, such as a license and a catch limit or other measure to keep shark catches to acceptable levels. The plans must also demonstrate how fisheries avoid catch and maximize live release of severely depleted shark species such as silky and oceanic whitetip sharks.

All shark management plans must be ready for commission review and approval by its next meeting in December.

Angela Martini, the delegate for the European Union, lamented the fact that the original measure had been stripped of its stronger provisions. The EU had itself proposed a lengthy shark conservation measure that also sought to reduce shark finning, but, after the small working group discussions, chose not to push it.

“We were very much in favor of fins naturally attached. No exceptions,” she said. “We support the adoption of this measure, but, once again, we express our disappointment with those countries that continue to oppose significant progress in the protection of shark species … especially particularly vulnerable sharks.”

 

***
Lack of Penalties Leads
To Rampant Non-Compliance

Not only does WCPFC seem unable to adopt measures that will adequately protect tuna stocks, most of its members seem incapable of complying with the measures that are passed.

According to Alexa Cole, chair of the commission’s Technical and Compliance Committee (TCC), only a handful of the more than three dozen commission members were deemed last year to be compliant: Canada, Mexico, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Tonga and Tokelau. The rest, including the United States, would have been considered non-compliant, but now there seems to be another category: un-assessed.

At the WCPFC meeting, Japan, in particular, vehemently argued that it had complied with all of WCPFC’s conservation measures. And because Japan simply refused to accept the commission assessment of it as non-compliant, the commission decided instead to consider it as merely “un-assessed,” thus allowing the commission to approve the TCC compliance report.

That so few countries actually follow the commission’s measures seemed to dishearten the Nauru delegation. One of its members suggested the commission should approach the rampant non- compliance issue.

“We try to get these things done properly. … It seems to me now the other group is more popular. I might be joining them next year. … Why do we do this process?” he asked.

Many have attributed the lax attitude toward compliance to the lack of penalties. When the commission created its compliance scheme, it bifurcated the process by passing an assessment framework, but not a penalty system.

The commission struggled to get a penalty scheme adopted at the December meeting, but it was difficult given that so many members have now been assessed as non-compliant.

The compliance measure proposed by the commission’s chair suggested that members determined to be high-priority non-compliant could face a loss of quota or access to data, among other things. In the end, the proposal failed.

For more on WCPFC, read our January 2014 pieces, “For Another Year, Pacific Bigeye Tuna Go Without Strong International Protection,” and “As Commission Dithers, Tuna Decline.” (Editorial)

Both and more are available on our website, www.environment-hawaii.org.

—Teresa Dawson

Volume 25, Number 7 January 2015