Port Majuro has been packed with fish carrier vessels and purse seiners engaged in transshipment activity. A total of 14 carrier vessels were counted in Majuro lagoon over the weekend. This is about double the usual number of the carrier ships that anchor in Majuro lagoon to await transshipment of tuna caught by purse seiners fishing in the RMI’s exclusive economic zone and those of nearby nations such as Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia.
“It is a very high number,” commented a MIMRA official. Transshipment activity appeared to pick up considerably this month following the end to the annual three-month moratorium on use of fish aggregating devices (FADs) by purse seiners fishing in Parties to the Nauru Agreement waters.
Read more about this in the October 26, 2018 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.