Too many boats. Too few tuna. In the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, the rights of countries to catch fish have outrun the fish’s ability to keep up. With no one willing to give ground, the result is a giant game of chicken being played out on the seas.
Yes, it’s … chicken of the sea.
And it is a game that no one can win. Not the fish. Not the countries in whose territorial waters the fish are found; when the fish are depleted, so are their national budgets. Not the distant-water fishing nations that flag boats to take the fish. And not, ultimately, the consumers of tuna, whether canned, fresh, or frozen.
About the only winners are the private companies and their shareholders who own the vessels that scoop tuna by the ton from tropical waters. And if the tuna populations fail, they, too, will be in trouble.
The contradictory interests of the nations that are party to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, the agency charged with managing highly migratory fish species in the region, make the achievement of reasonable approaches to dealing with overfishing a near impossibility. And as the resources grow scarcer, the contradictions become sharper, the parties dig their heels in deeper, and prospects for resolution fade to dark.
To the Last Fish
The contradictions were as large as the Ko Olina ballroom that held the 400 delegates and observers attending the WCPFC’s annual meeting last month on O`ahu. The gathering marked the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the convention that led to the commission’s establishment, but there was little cause to celebrate.
News from the fisheries scientists who advise the commission was grim. A three-year plan adopted by WCPFC in 2008 to rein in fishing effort on bigeye and yellowfin was not working, especially with respect to bigeye. Given the loopholes and exemptions granted by the commission, the scientists reported, “we estimate that only a 14 percent reduction in bigeye tuna overfishing can be expected.” Even if all these exceptions were erased, overfishing on bigeye would be reduced no more than 50 percent, they found.
But for every action proposed by one commission member, or bloc of members, to address the problem, there was an equal and opposite reaction, suggesting that Newton’s third law applies to the realm of international negotiations as well as physics.
Freeze the number of purse seiners? Yes, say the industrialized nations, which have the greatest number of boats under their flags. No, say the small island states, which have untold numbers of purse seiners under construction in Asian boatyards, at $20 million a pop.
Close millions of square miles of open ocean to all purse seine fishing? Yes, say the island states, which stand to benefit by pushing purse seiners out of the free zone and into their own pay-to-play waters. No, say the industrialized nations, pointing out that such a measure would not curb effort, simply make it more inconvenient and expensive.
Impose a three-month cap on all fishing? It made sense to the European Union, which proposed it, but not to those members with tuna canneries and processors whose operations would be disrupted.
In short, any and all reasonable proposals that might have had a chance of helping bigeye stocks were doomed. While the commission did agree on some worthy measures – limiting catches of bluefin tuna and North Pacific striped marlin, imposing more stringent controls on a doughnut hole in the Eastern Pacific, calling for better understanding of shark involvement in the managed fisheries – the elephant in the room at the start of the meeting was still there when the meeting closed. Bigeye tuna overfishing remains the central problem of this region and, as dire as the outlook is now, it will only worsen over the next year.
Failure Is an Option
Recently, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) concluded a study of future scenarios for Pacific islands fisheries, extending to the year 2035. The SPC is a consortium of 26 Pacific island states and the United States that advises and assists members on matters of regional interest.
Under the worst-case scenario, the fisheries of the region collapse. “WCPFC is ineffective and there is failure to agree on effective allocation and management measures,” Yellowfin and bigeye stocks decline dramatically with major economic losses… Range contraction and/or stock declines of yellowfin and bigeye make most domestic longline fisheries uneconomic. Skipjack fisheries decline in value due to falling catch per unit of effort and smaller fish, with an increasing risk of recruitment failure.”
The report was prepared before the latest meeting of the WCPFC, which could have only tipped the scales in favor of the worst-case outlook. Japan’s head of delegation, while vigorously defending his own country’s interest, still managed to put on the table some of the most incisive comments about the commission’s dysfunctionality:
“This commission was established to implement the collective effort by members to ensure the sustainability of resources,” said Masanori Miyahara, “but in actuality, many – all – of the members are just sticking to their own interests, with almost no collective action made or taken in a timely manner.”
This means more than the ongoing decline of bigeye at current rates, he continued. “Because of this vacancy of effective action,” said Miyahara, “investors are looking for opportunities to build big purse seiners, one after another. One purse seiner costs $20 million. Just one purse seiner. Of course, those investors seek the short-term profit to recover that high cost. Then they will just increase the catch. But because of the struggles, competition, and fights among members… we cannot stop that kind of uncontrolled increase in fishing capacity.”
Few attending the meeting would have disagreed with Miyahara’s bleak outlook.
Shifting the Burden
With a regulatory commission in paralysis, and in the face of growing, apparently unstoppable fishing effort, what actual possibilities exist for reversing this disastrous course?
The European Union and Japanese delegations both made menacing comments about closing markets to tuna products from the region – but in light of Europe’s mismanagement of its own fisheries and Japan’s insatiable demand for tuna, it seems unlikely that either will shut themselves out of what remains the most productive ocean in the world.
When governments do not or cannot act, the door is open to consumer action. Decades ago, a move to make canned tuna products dolphin-safe in the United States had enormous positive consequences. In face of the global crisis looming in tuna fisheries, the onus may once more fall on consumers.
So how can one individual support sustainable fisheries, in the Pacific and elsewhere?
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Learn the source of the tuna you buy, and if you don’t think it was sustainably caught, leave it on the shelf. The Monterey Bay Aquarium “Seafood Watch” has consumer guides to sustainable fish on its website: www.montereybayaquarium.org Other non-governmental organizations with information on tuna products include Greenpeace and the Marine Conservation Society (www.fishonline.org).
•Urge Congress to require labeling of tuna products, including their geographic source and method of capture. Even if the import of fish from poorly managed fisheries cannot be stopped, such a measure will open the door to market pressure, which could yield results.
But market pressure cannot be a substitute for standing up to those interests – economic and political – that lie behind the dismal state of fisheries across the globe. The nations with seats at the WCPFC table must realize, ultimately, that the race to the last fish is one that will have no winners. If that is not enough to bend wills and fo
rce compromise, Pacific tuna are doomed.
Volume 21, Number 7 — January 2011
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