Last year was a record-setting one for Pacific island nations, with revenues from the Parties to the Nauru Agreement’s purse-seine vessel day scheme netting USD 500 million (EUR 443.3 million).
Fisheries ministers of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) bloc- Palau, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Nauru, and Tokelau confirmed the all-time high VDS 2018 earnings in a communique signed in May’s ministerial meeting held in Palau at the end of May.
In 2018, the scheme brought in an estimated USD 460 million to USD 480 million (EUR 407.8 million to EUR 425.5 million).
In the communique, ministers noted that the “VDS had successfully held purse seine effort in PNA [exclusive economic zones] within the agreed limit at the 2010 level and relatively stable catches had been maintained.”
PNA CEO Ludwig Kumoru said that his organization expects VDS revenues to increase further in coming years.
For the PNA, the VDS had also effectively controlled the number of purse-seine vessels while promoting growth in domestic fleets, Kumoru said.
The PNA controls the world’s largest tuna-purse seine fishery, which supplies 50 percent of the world’s skipjack tuna.
The VDS sets an overall total allowable effort (TAE) limit on the number of days fishing vessels can be licensed to fish in PNA exclusive economic zones per year. Each country gets a share of the TAE for use in its zone each year.
Under the scheme, the fishing days can be traded between countries in cases where a country has used up all its days while another has spare days.
In the 2019 Communique, ministers set 44,033 days for 2020 and provisionally for 2021 and 2022.
The implementation of the VDS for the longline industry is also a “work in progress,” but has been strengthened by participation from Kiribati. Vanuatu, a non-PNA country, has also expressed its wish to join the VDS program.
Ministers noted that the TAE for the PNA’s new longline VDS, now including Kiribati, is 171,535 days.
The PNA will continually review and strengthen the VDS so it “remains the central arrangement in the management of the regional purse seine fishery and continues to provide the basis for Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) measures and for national value such as through capitalization,” according to the bloc’s 2019-2025 strategic plan.
Photo courtesy of Pacific Islands Tuna Industry Association
