At the rate the Hawai`i longline fleet is catching bigeye tuna, it may, for the second year in a row, reach its annual catch limit for the Western and Central Pacific well before the year’s end. If that happens, it will once more need the U.S. territories of Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), and/or American Samoa to chip in 1,000 metric tons each from their tuna quotas to keep its vessels at sea through December.
At last month’s meeting of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, industry experts suggested that the fleet will hit its limit in June. That’s more than a month earlier than last year, when a large portion of the fleet had to site idle for two months while the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) completed the rule-making process to allow the transfer of territorial quotas to the Hawai`i longline fleet.
As of press time, NMFS was still determining whether and by how much the 2015 catch limit, established by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), was exceeded. Although the quota was nominally 3,554 metric tons, it was lowered to 3,502 mt to reflect actual catches above the quota the previous year, 2014.
Once that’s determined, the agency will publish the adjusted 2016 quota and develop a rule package specifying bigeye tuna quotas for the territories and allowing for quota transfers to the Hawai`i fleet.
Depending on the pace of fishing and rule-making, vessels may again be faced with having to return to port because they’ve hit the quota before quota-transfer rules are ready. Not only does NMFS need to make sure the rules comply with the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act, but agreements between the Hawai`i fleet and the territories also need to be finalized before any quota transfer is complete.
“There is a similar amount of uncertainty of exactly when we’ll get those rules out” this year, NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office administrator Mike Tosatto told the council last month.
Last year, the fleet needed all 1,000 metric tons transferred from the CNMI and, according to preliminary data, a portion of the Guam quota as well.
“Obviously, we can’t emphasize enough the need to avoid the gap. I think we all saw what the ramifications were — a displacement of a large part of the fleet,” said council member Mike Goto, who is also manager of the Honolulu fish auction. He suggested that 2015, which saw record landings of bigeye, might be the start of a new normal of high-volume catches.
“We’d like steady fishing here without market interruption. … That’s the goal moving forward,” he said.
The council as a whole echoed his sentiments and urged NMFS “not to repeat the non-seamless administrative rule-making process experienced in 2015” and to expedite the 2016 specification package.
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Spatial Management
Next year, the WCPFC catch limit for the U.S. longline fleet (which is mostly made up of Hawai`i vessels) drops to 3,345 metric tons. After that, the organization’s present Conservation and Management Measure (CMM) for tropical tunas expires. Rather than continuing the current management scheme, in which member nations are assigned longline catch limits based on a percentage reduction of historical catches, Wespac staff and advisers have argued that conservation of bigeye in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) could be better achieved by reducing effort where the stock is being most heavily impacted. And those areas are nowhere near Hawai`i
That being the case, the Hawai`i fleet’s catch limits could be raised significantly under such a management scheme, which Wespac staffers clearly hope would be adopted by WCPFC at its 2017 meeting.
On the last day of last year’s WCPFC’s meeting, the U.S. delegation expressed its desire to have the commission’s science contractor, the Secretariat for the Pacific Community (SPC), investigate spatial management options. Although the European Union voiced its support for the recommendation, the commission ultimately did not incorporate such a study into the SPC’s work plan.
At Wespac’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) meeting last month, council executive director Kitty Simonds asked committee member John Hampton, who is also a member of the SPC, how the United States could get the SPC to begin such a study.
“It’s up to the secretariat to include these things or not,” Hampton replied, adding that it “cannot base what we do … on interventions across the floor. It would be chaos.” (At the meetings of the WCPFC, statements from delegates during plenary sessions are described as interventions.)
The SPC would also need funding to do the study, he continued.
“Our budget is predicted to be static for the coming years,” he said. Even if a funding commitment was made and a contract developed soon, Hampton said he doubted the SPC would be able to do much before WCPFC’s scientific committee meets in August, when it would likely discuss the research plans for 2017.
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Looking Eastward
At the same time Wespac is seeking ways to raise bigeye tuna catch limits in the Western and Central Pacific, it’s also looking eastward. Although the vast majority of bigeye caught by the Hawai`i longliners is taken in the region governed by WCPFC, the vessels can also fish in the Eastern Pacific. However, in the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO), managed by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), U.S. vessels longer than 24 meters are limited to a total catch of 500 mt of bigeye.
Twenty-three percent of the U.S. longline vessels based in Hawai`i are larger than 24 meters. Last November, NMFS closed the fishery off to those larger vessels when it determined that the 500 mt limit had been reached.
To help ensure as many Hawai`i vessels as possible can continue fishing for bigeye, Wespac staff last month proposed that the council consider recommending that the IATTC amend its limits on U.S. longliners.
At the council’s SSC meeting last month, Wespac senior scientist Paul Dalzell pointed out that for the past few years in the EPO, bigeye have not been considered overfished or subject to overfishing, unlike in the Western and Central Pacific, where overfishing is occurring and data suggest the stock is likely overfished.
He noted that bigeye catches in the Eastern Pacific peaked in 2001 and have since declined. What’s more, Asian fleets fishing in the region have been catching far fewer bigeye than is allowed under IATTC catch limits.
Only 63 percent of the Asian limits were caught in 2014, he noted. In contrast, the United States has invested heavily in the Eastern Pacific, he added, and the bigeye fishery has “really has taken off.” U.S. longliners now catch about 3,000 metric tons of bigeye in that region.
Because the IATTC’s bigeye conservation measure expires this year, Dalzell said there’s an opportunity for the United States to have its catch limits amended. Some potential options are: 1) increase the catch limit for large U.S. longliners; 2) establish a new catch limit for all U.S. vessels, regardless of size; 3) retain the current quotas, but allow for transfers; 4) establish a total allowable bigeye catch for all fleets in the EPO; or 4) implement a spatial management scheme.
Given that the bigeye stock in the Eastern Pacific was subject to overfishing not long ago and is under serious pressure in the WCPO, some SSC members seemed hesitant to raise the U.S. catch limits in the region.
“I have a little trouble understanding how increasing catch limits is a conservation measure,” said committee member John Sibert, a fishery scientist. “If the U.S. is going to make a bid for a higher catch limit, it should be in the context of deceasing total catch limits so it appears to be supporting the conservation of bigeye rather than increasing the exploitation rate.”
Dalzell tried to justify the proposals by pointing out that the bigeye population in the Eastern Pacific is in a “happier place” than in the Western Pacific.
“Let’s exploit it some more, then!” Sibert said sarcastically. He later added that he would be happy to increase the U.S. quota so long as it’s done in the context of keeping the total catch low.
“Let’s try and be conservation-minded here,” he said.
Committee member John Hampton also pointed out that the IATTC has different conservation targets for bigeye than the WCPFC. If the IATTC employed the stock status evaluation method used by the WCPFC, bigeye stocks in the Eastern Pacific would be in the same dire state as those in the Western Pacific, he said.
“I wouldn’t be getting excited about huge exploitation potential,” Hampton said of Dalzell’s assessment of the Eastern Pacific stock.
Dalzell said his agency wasn’t seeking a large expansion of bigeye catch limits in the Eastern Pacific, but rather wanted to find a way to keep big boats from having to tie up when they reach 500 mt.
“This is the new reality. The EPO has become extremely important to this fishery. Can we get a number that reflects that? At the same time, I agree, we shouldn’t compromise stock conservation,” he said.
At the Wespac’s full meeting, Dalzell suggested a 5,000 mt limit in the EPO might be something the United States could shoot for.
In the end, the council voted to direct its staff to work with NMFS and the IATTC to “evaluate impacts of management options that could provide relief to Hawai`i longliners while not resulting in overfishing.”
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Monument Expansion
In addition to seeking ways to increase bigeye tuna catch limits imposed by the WCPFC and IATTC, Wespac is also hoping to keep open fishing grounds around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) that a group of native Hawaiians — including Office of Hawaiian Affairs director Kamanaopono Crabbe, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands assistant director William Aila, and noted Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson — proposed in January to become part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
In their January 19 letter to President Barack Obama, they wrote, “While the current boundary of Papahanaumokuakea includes vital habitat for a number of species, it does not fully protect habitat and travel routes for several species including Hawaiian monk seals, green sea turtles, sharks, whales, black-footed and Laysan albatrosses as well as other species. Additionally, large, fully protected marine reserves and sanctuaries are more resilient to climate change and therefore have emerged as important to mitigating the impacts of our warming planet.”
At the council’s meeting, staffer Eric Kingma argued that there is no science supporting the idea that such an expansion would have a conservation benefit. He also noted that Hawai`i already has 22 times more marine protected areas than any other state in the union. What’s more, he estimated that expanding the monument’s boundaries to encompass the entire U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) — which extends 200 miles from shore — could cost the Hawai`i longliners that fish up there about $10 million a year.
According to logbooks, 82 of Hawai`i’s 144 longline vessels fished in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands EEZ last year, with the most commonly caught species being bigeye tuna.
After Kingma’s presentation, council member McGrew Rice said that if monument is expanded and the Hawai`i longliners lose access to $10 million worth of fish, “we just give that $10 million to the Asian countries, because we’re going to import their fish [and] get ‘tailpipe’ tuna.” (“Tailpipe tuna” is a term coined by the council to describe tuna that has been treated with carbon monoxide; the treatment enhances the color of the fish and gives buyers the impression it is fresher than it actually is.)
Council chair Ed Ebisui echoed Kingma’s assertion that the expansion proposal was not based on science.
“We’re science based,” he said. “Rational arguments have difficulty in an emotional, irrational environment.”
The council ultimately voted to have staff write a letter to the president to explain the “lack of conservation benefit” and the negative impacts an expansion would have on the Hawai`i fishery specifically and the U.S. seafood market more generally.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 26, Number 10 April 2016
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