Tuvalu's fisheries minister Pita Elisala says his nation is not selling fishing days to distant water fishing countries that have blocked initiatives to develop its domestic fishery.
Ministers from the Parties to the Nauru Agreement at their annual meeting in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia. Joining them at the opening was new FSM President Peter Christian and Pohnpei Governor John Ehsa (front center, not in uniforms). Photo: Bill Jaynes
Mr Elisala was speaking during the two-day Parties to the Nauru Agreement annual meeting of ministers in the Federated States of Micronesia.
Last month, PNA officials wrote to fisheries officials in Japan and Taiwan and to the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation requesting meetings to resolve what PNA CEO Dr. Transform Aqorau described this week as an embargo against island domestic development.
Mr Elisala, who did not name what countries were preventing fisheries developments in Tuvalu, says Tuvalu is concerned with the way these nations had treated them and is therefore refusing to sell them fishing days.
He says this could have negative repercussions for Tuvalu as it depends on donor aid from these same countries.
Dr Aqorau says Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands have attempted to get purse seiners from Taiwan, but these efforts have been prevented.