Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Top of the agenda at next week’s annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) in Suva, Fiji is updating the way conservation management on the high seas is conducted and transmitted.

Project lead for the Pew Charitable Trusts, Glen Holmes said the NGO hopes the Regional Fisheries Management Organization (known locally as the Pacific Tuna Commission) will finally implement amendments that have been worked on for years and these include:

Adopt EM standards to improve data collection in WCPFC fisheries

Electronic monitoring (EM) is key to improving the independent data collection and transparency of the fisheries the Commission oversees.

After almost 10 years of discussion, a set of interim EM standards is before the Commission for adoption. The Commission should aim to reach agreement on outstanding issues and adopt these EM standards, while ensuring that the standards remain robust and effective.

Specifically, the Commission should require that members seeking to use EM data to meet WCPFC reporting requirements confirm that their EM systems meet all of the ‘MUST’ requirements in the standards (Annex 4, interim reporting requirements, attestation), rather than just promising to do so in the future.

The Commission also should task the ERandEM Working Group to develop text for a measure detailing an operational EM program that can be adopted by the Commission in 2025.

Improve the monitoring and reporting of at-sea transshipment activities

The gaps in the Commission’s ability to monitor and verify at-sea transshipment activities must be closed. The Commission should adopt a stronger measure on transshipment this year, bringing WCPFC up to the standard of the other tuna RFMOs. The large number of transshipments occurring in the WCPFC area and lack of updated reporting requirements currently creates opportunities for laundering Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) catch.

The stronger measure should include:

• •        Shortening the submission deadline for transshipment declarations;
• •        Requiring that IMO numbers be included on notification and declaration forms;
• •        Prohibiting vessels from acting as a receiving and offloading vessel on the same trip; and
• •        Requiring vessels to provide information on instances of non-fish supply and/or crew transfer activities.

Adopting a measure without these key elements would mean that seven years of negotiations would have failed to secure a meaningful outcome, leaving the WCPFC to continue to lag the rest of the world when it comes to managing transshipment activity.

He said they also want electronic monitoring on vessels to finally be normalized for vessels fishing in the Pacific.

"I think that WCPFC was the first tuna commission to actually start down this road, 10 years ago, and it's one of the last ones to make some progress. To be fair, it did this in conjunction with electronic reporting, and it did get electronic reporting up a while ago. So I think it tended to focus initially on the reporting side."

The reporting is the way the data is sent in to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and to the flag states, rather than using paper log books and pieces of paper sent or faxes — it's much more modern and efficient to report electronically.

Mr. Holmes said the Commission has been working out a way to incorporate cameras, for instance, so ship operators can monitor catches, by-catch and so on.

"Essentially a lot of the work that a human observer might currently do. And so in order to be able to do that, and to do that with confidence in the information that those systems generate, you need a bunch of standards. You need to agree on the minimum standards.

"Where cameras will be, and what the cameras can actually monitor, and the resolutions that the cameras are operating at, and that sort of stuff. And it's like a bit of a Pandora's box. It sounds very simple at first pass, and then you start getting into the details, and you realize that there's a lot more things that need to be considered."

He said the complexity involved in these decisions is what has delayed the process.

"The other tuna commissions have managed to agree and move forward on this in a much more timely manner than WCFPC has managed to do. And so I think there is a bit of chain dragging for WCPFC."

But Holmes said he has every confidence "that standards will be agreed this year to allow electronic monitoring to take place in the Western and Central Pacific."

Another issue for Pew Charitable Trusts and other NGOs covering the Commission's work is the failure to date to put in place a workable system for managing the transshipment of fish catch on the high seas.

Holmes said transshipping of fish from one vessel to another is a legitimate exercise, if done under clear parameters.

But on the high seas there is less scrutiny.

They are concerned at the lack of scrutiny. There is less oversight, and so that opens the doors "for nefarious activities to possibly slip through the compliance cracks."

He said the other Regional Fisheries Management Organizations around the world have managed to put improved management of transshipment in place.

"The WCFPC is the last of the tuna RFMOs to lift its transshipping standard up to the guidelines established by the FAO a number of years ago.

"It's high time that the standards were lifted up so that there was better monitoring of transshipment activities, to allow better management of the fishery as a whole."

Meanwhile another fisheries NGO that will be at next week's meeting in Suva, Accountability Fish, want to ensure that outside observers can sit in the full Technical and Compliance Committee meeting where key sustainability data is reviewed and confirmed.

The NGO said it asked New Zealand and a number of other member countries to support their push but they got a blunt no from some governments.

Click on attachment to download the full report from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Ocean Foundation.