Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The 26-member Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) reached some momentous decisions at its recent annual conference in Suva.

That's the view of a member of environmental watchdog group, the Pew Charitable Trusts' international fisheries project, Glen Holmes.

The Commission's job is to oversee the management and conservation of the Pacific's stocks of highly migratory fish, especially tuna.

The agency has now started the process of embracing electronic monitoring of catches, but Holmes told RNZ Pacific one of the most significant developments was the adoption of a set of labor standards for crew.

This is a critical stepping stone to increasing independent data collection across, particularly, the long-lining sector of tuna fisheries. We see it as a really important step forward for the world's biggest tuna fishery and we're very pleased that these standards have been adopted. The next step is to take this further forward and fully incorporate into the management regime, a process for having electronic monitoring as a completely typical operating procedure, in the same way that on-board observers are now.

The WCPFC hasn't upgraded or improved its transshipment measure in over 15 years, now. Every other tuna RFMO [Regional Fisheries Management Organization] has improved its management of transshipping at sea and the failure of the commission to come to an agreement after extensive discussions this year and even more expensive discussions last year, it's a failure of the Commission, really.

“It is seriously disappointing and I hope that the members that were unable to come to a compromise situation that improved the management of transshipment take a look at what's happened over the last, particularly the last couple of years, and come to the Commission next year, with the intention of lifting the standards for transshipment in the western Pacific. We are very disappointed at that outcome,” Holmes said.

BACKGROUND

About US$10.4 billion worth of tuna are transhipped annually with around US$6.5 billion coming from the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.

Transhipping is when fish are moved from one fishing vessel to another ship at sea instead of being unloaded directly to land and has a reputation for facilitating criminal behavior.

Global commercial tuna fisheries are valued at more than US$40 billion a year.

A report by Pew Charitable Trusts found in 2018 — the latest pre-pandemic year for which data is available — regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) found about 1.4 million metric tons of tuna were transferred and 200,000 tons of other species.

The Pacific Ocean accounted for 69 percent of the global total transhipment of tuna. The majority is from areas managed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC).

One of the authors of the report, Raiana McKinney, said because transhipment often happens at sea, away from authorities and with a lack of monitoring control it "can often lead to illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing".

"When we talk about transhipment, we get this unsavory note because of the lack of controls in place."

McKinney said every other regional fisheries management organization had updated its transhipment measures except for the WCPFC.

"It's been 15 years since WCPFC has updated its transhipment measure.

"If these activities are happening WCPFC needs to update their measure to make sure that those activities are happening in a very well monitored and transparent manner, so that consumers can feel good about the products that are making it to their table."

McKinney said transhipment is an efficient means to bring seafood to consumers. The report found most longline vessels primarily tranship at sea to allow high-value fresh catch to reach dock as soon as possible.

Purse seine vessels make up 84 percent of transhipped fish. However, this mainly occurs in port where it is well monitored.

The report recommended improved reporting, data sharing and monitoring on all transhipment activity.

"Fisheries managers should require 100 percent coverage by human or electronic observers (or a combination) on both the fishing and carrier vessels for all transhipping events, regardless of where the events occur," the report said.

Observers are placed on fishing vessels and carriers to gather independent data on fishing catch.

McKinney said carriers have observers on board but longlines in the WCPFC only have 5 percent observer coverage. Scientists are asking for this to increase to 20 percent.

"Twenty percent is certainly not the A-star goal plus number a lot of people would hope for, especially environmentalists, but 20 percent is the bare minimum that would be needed for a lot of the current assessments that WCPFC Scientists are currently doing.

"Of course, if we want to get a more comprehensive view of what's going on then greater observer coverage would be needed."

She said electronic monitoring would also help fill the gap.

"Cameras are really great at what they do but it's troublesome when you try to implement a technology like that for all WCPFC members."

She said regulated standards need to be in place to use cameras.

"Without those standards in place, each member is creating their own camera formula in which it may not be interoperable and so it's important that WCPFC does take the time to figure out what those EM (Electronic Monitoring) standards are first."