Pacific fisheries

The Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) and WWF are celebrating the rollout of observer electronic reporting tools - through the new Observer eReporting App - that will reduce Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing and bolster supply chain transparency and traceability in the Western and Central Pacific tuna fisheries.
 

The annual official meeting of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement begins in the Marshall Islands capital Majuro today.

The PNA controls the world's largest sustainable tuna purse-seine fishery.

Its meeting is expected to endorse recommendations for action by government ministers who will meet in Majuro in two months time.

Members will look at how to implement calls to ban high-sea bunkering of fishing vessels by requiring refuelling in ports or designated zones.

The launching was held as one of the side events associated with the 13th session of the Western and Central Pacific Commission (WCPFC).

PITIA is a regional body for national fisheries associations in the Pacific Island Countries except Australia, New Zealand and Tokelau.

The Secretariat of the Pacific Islands Tuna Industry, PITIA was located in Nuku’alofa before its Executive Board’s decision to relocate it to Honiara late last year.

With the leadership of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) that is headquartered in Honiara, Solomon Islands, the fisheries officers have returned to their respective offices to spearhead the efficient capturing and analyzing of data on tuna catches and tuna fleet that are fishing in Pacific waters.

“The five day RIMF training has been very productive and participants now return to work armed with the new knowledge on how they can capture data better,” says Kenneth Katafono, FFA’s Manager IT and lead trainer of the RIMF workshop.

 This was the focus of IFC’s new research, which was presented at the Harbor Project Development Conference, hosted by the Solomon Islands Government.

IFC Senior Operations Officer, Dina Nicholas, said, “What we are seeing in the Pacific generally is that the fisheries industry only employs about 1 percent of its workforce locally. Only 10 percent of the catch is processed locally.”

Yolanda Jiang, PT&I China’s Manager, Trade, Operations and Special Projects based in Beijing, attended the 11thFuzhou International Fisheries Expo, the second largest professional fisheries fair in China.