Five days of exhaustive talks at the annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) yielded mixed results for Pacific island states. But the Parties to Nauru Agreement (PNA) said it was “deeply disappointed with the failure” of the WCPFC “to reach an amicable solution on bigeye tuna that would address its […]
The PNA plan to implement a Vessel Day Scheme (VDS) for the longliner fishing industry in the western and central Pacific received a boost recently with the agreement of Papua New Guinea and Tokelau to join the five PNA nations that had triggered the plan at the end of last year. This brings six of […]
The visit to Majuro this week by a New Zealand team reviewing commercial tuna management schemes highlights a growing debate between the eight PNA members and distant water fishing nations. The conflict centers on whether “catch limits” are better than “effort limits,” which is what PNA uses to manage the skipjack tuna fishery. Effort limits […]
