A New Zealand government team is in Majuro in the Marshall Islands to push its case for Pacific tuna management to be done using quota limits.
A purse seiner in Majuro Atoll off-loads skipjack tuna to a waiting carrier vessel for transshipment to a cannery. Photo: RNZI/Giff Johnson
The Marshalls' houses the headquarters of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, which manages much of the Pacific's tuna harvest.
It uses what are defined as effort limits built around the Vessel Day Scheme, which limit the numbers of days trawlers, usually from distant water nations, can fish.
New Zealand is providing a multi-million dollar package to determine the best approach and is promoting its own domestic management scheme, using quota limits, as an alternative.
New Zealand officials say that effort limits have not limited tuna catches in the Pacific to sustainable levels, and need reform.
But the PNA's chief executive Dr. Transform Aqorau says tonnage caught within the eight PNA fishing zones show stable catches over the past five years, while on the high seas where there's less regulation, a dramatic increase in tonnage has been seen.
The PNA also says its fishery is a multi-zone, multi-species fishery in which numerous countries fish, and applying quota would not work.