Council wants paperwork on Pacific bigeye tuna fishing

Permits and reports of catches through logbooks are one of the domestic measures voted last week to address over-fishing of the Pacific bigeye tuna.

Media and education specialist Sylvia Spalding said all commercial boats that fish for pelagic species such as open-water species as opposed to bottom fish, in federal waters, three to 200 miles offshore surrounding Hawaii would be required to have the permits and the logbooks as voted by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

The council finalized last week its recommended management measures to address over-fishing of Pacific bigeye tuna.

“While the catch of bigeye tuna by the fisheries under the jurisdiction of the council account for less than 5 percent of the harvest of bigeye tuna in the Pacific, U.S. law requires that the council take action if over-fishing of a species is occurring in its fisheries,” said Spalding.

She said the council’s recommendation, which will be transmitted to the Secretary of Commerce for review and approval, includes a suite of domestic and international measures.

There has long been concerns, said Spalding, that fishing by commercial vessels around offshore Fish Aggregation Devices and weather buoys and at Cross Seamount off of the Big Island of Hawaii account for a substantial take of bigeye tuna. The recommended reporting requirements would now provide detailed data on the amount of the harvest of not only bigeye but other species as well.

“This reporting is especially critical now as management decisions for migratory species, such as tuna, are being made by international fishery management organizations,” said council executive director Kitty M. Simonds.

“These organizations often are relying on country- or fleet-specific quotas based on historical catches, so knowing the amount of the catches for our fisheries is very important.”

Simonds said, for example, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission decided that the 2004 catches of Pacific bigeye tuna in the eastern Pacific by long-line vessels be capped at 2001 catches by country. She said these catches were approximately 37,000 mt for Japan; 13,000 mt for Korea; 8,000 mt for Taiwan; 3,000 mt for China; 150 mt for the United States; and 4,000 mt for other fleets.

The council voted among the international measures, that the U.S. delegation to the IATTC proposed that long line fleets that catch less than 555 mt that is 1 percent of the total average bigeye tuna catch reported in the eastern Pacific Ocean between 1999 and 2003, be exempted from quotas, as these fleets do not contribute significantly to over fishing.

Spalding said the other measures voted on by the council to address the Pacific bigeye tuna over-fishing in the Pacific include the following:

HAWAII SMALL BOAT FISHERIES

* A control date to be established for all commercial pelagic boats fishing in federal waters. This warns any fisherman considering entering one of these fisheries after this date that they might be excluded from the fishery in the future.

* An alternative sampling design to be implemented by the Hawaii Marine Recreational Fishing Survey program in addition to its random digit dialing telephone survey, in order to gather more precise estimates of catch and effort from recreational boat fishermen.

* Two workshops to be held involving the federal Western Pacific Fishery Information Network and the Hawaii State Division of Aquatic Resources to improve the State’s data reporting system and estimates for pelagic species, including Bigeye Tuna.

INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT IN THE WESTERN AND CENTRAL PACIFIC OCEAN

* A US proposal to the international Western and Central Pacific Fishery Commission (WCPFC) to adopt the following measures:

* Controls that cap and rollback bigeye tuna effort to 1999 for the short term and to a point that eliminates over fishing in the long-term;

* Country-level quotas (transferable within countries but not between countries); and

* Mandatory registration and limits to number of FAD’s utilized by purse seine vessels.

The Council is a member of the US delegation to the WCPFC. Members of the WCPFC are required to adhere to measures passed by the organization. While the US is currently not a member of the WCPFC, President Bush on May 16 of this year sent a message to the US Senate asking it to “give early and favorable consideration to the WCPF Convention and give its advice and consent to its ratification.”

THE ROLE OF US REGIONAL FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCILS IN INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

* Adoption of a 16-step process ranging from ensuring that Councils are represented on the US delegation in the international arena to implementation of international decisions through the regional fishery management process as mandated in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

Spalding also said the Council voted to move forward with a range of management alternatives to address over fishing of bottom fish around the Hawaiian Islands. The Council would review these options and likely take final action on them at its March 2006 meeting.

She said the council would also continue to develop and evaluate options that would include expeditious scientific research to regulate shark-viewing operations.