An illegal transshipment is seen taking place on board the ship 'Heng Xing 1' in an area of international waters near the exclusive economic zone of Indonesia. Photo: Shannon Service / Greenpeace
Fishing monitoring processes will be discussed from today in Rarotonga when Pacific leaders gather at the annual talks on managing the world's largest tuna fishery this week.
Twenty-six member countries and participating territories of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) have convened in the Cook Islands this week for the 20th session of the Commission.
The Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) is asking for more oversight on transshipment: that is when a ship offloads fish into another ship without coming into port. This practice means there is less oversight and is thought to foster illegal fishing behaviour.
FFA director-general Manumatavai Tupou-Roosen said electronic monitoring could be a solution if fishing vessels insist they cannot come into port.
"If it continues to be at sea we certainly need to have those cameras on vessels," Tupou-Roosn said.
"We certainly need more personal and more capacity to monitor that activity so we can collect and verify the data.
All purse seine fishing boats - 100 percent - have observers on board, whose job it is to monitor fishing activity.
However, longliners only have about five percent.
Pew Charitable Trusts Geln Holmes said cameras on board could plug the gaps where there are no observers.
"[For] some of the longline vessels the conditions aren't great, [for] some of them the vessels just aren't big enough to accommodate another person on board, that is a logistical challenge and it's in that space particularly that electronic monitoring comes into it's own," Holmes said.
'Unfit behaviour'
Meanwhile, the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) have put in a proposal to address the inbalance in the way fishery monitoring data is used to inform the Paciifc Tuna Commisions complience process.
They are asking for the number of reports that come in from observers off purse seine boats to be brought down to the same level as the longliners.
Holmes said the longline sector should be improving its standards, not the other way around.
"Bring it up to parity, not bring the purse seine sector down to the equivalent of longline."
Holmes said it was like the the criminal system only acting on certain charges.
"If the police submit charges against somebody, but then the courts only consider 30 percent of those charges, then a whole bunch of them, are going to slip through the gaps.
"That's an equivalent sort of situation to what the PNA have proposed."
However, in response PNA CEO Saanga Clark said it was inaccurate and the new proposed rules would make the monitoring process more fair.
"An independent review panel in 2018 found there to be a higher level issue of fairness and equivalence in the WCPFC compliance process, and that CMS's (convention on migratory species') focus on the purse seine fishery, much of which is already well monitored within EEZs, as compared with the lesser scrutiny accorded longline and long-distance pole and line fleets operating solely on the high seas in the Convention Area."
As well as monitoring being discussed at the meeting, Tupou-Roosen said the FFA wanted a binding measure to ensure crew welfare - a non-binding resolution on labour standards is already in place.
"What we want to do is safeguard against any of that unfit behaviour on vessels where crew feel they are in a position where they're not free or treated in a manner where you would expect any worker to be treated. "
The tropical tuna measure that guides fishing controls for bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna is also to be reviewed at the meeting.
The current measure expires at the end of this year.
The FFA as part of the review wants to restrict purse seine effort on the high seas, equivilent to what it was in 2012.
"Our members have always approached any review of the measure quite cautiously and looking for minimal changes, and the reason I say that is because of the fine line in managing that delicate balance between any of the provisions within that measure."
Pew's Glen Holmes said the CMM, the conservation and management measure, which dictates how the compliance regime works also expires this year.
"If they don't come to an agreement there will be no compliance regime," he said.
"So really that should become a permanent measure that is up for a periodic review, rather than it just expires and they have to renegotiate with the threat of having nothing.
"And ideally it should also be disconnected from t he tropical tuna negotiation because, unfortunately the way of international negotiations, one point of debate iss held to ransom over another point of debate," he added.