The North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) decided to close gaps in management, improve the vessel authorization process, report transshipment of bycatch species, and require reporting of International Maritime Organization (IMO) numbers at its latest meeting – held nearly a year late.
The seventh annual session of the commission, held in Sapporo, Japan, from 22 to 24 March, 2023, was originally scheduled for 28 to 30 March, 2022, but the meeting was postponed as Western countries tried to isolate Russia in the days following its invasion of Ukraine.
There were several issues before the commission, including better monitoring of transshipments, information-sharing with other overlapping regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs), developing a regional observer program, restricting shark-finning, and setting a new catch limit for Pacific saury.
Transshipment was a key issue for the NPFC, as the region the commission covers sees a large amount of transshipments with little oversight, The Pew Charitable Trusts Senior Associate Raiana McKinney – who attended the meeting as an observer – told SeafoodSource.
“At the NPFC, 85 percent of the catch is transshipped, and it’s poorly regulated. The current measure only applies to bottom fisheries, but NPFC covers a fabulously broader range of species, other than those in bottom fisheries. These regulations are extremely outdated. They were created in 2016, and so much has changed. So we really want to see the members get behind the small working group’s proposal to update it.”
The NPFC’s management area overlaps with a part of the ocean managed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), a separate RFMO overseeing regional tuna fisheries. The overlap makes it harder to monitor whether transshipped fish were legally caught, since a transshipping vessel can claim to have been transporting fish covered by the other RFMO. The lack of a mechanism for sharing information between the two RFMOs is a weak link in the system.
At the meeting, the NPFC took steps to change that. The commissioned approved a proposal for a data-sharing agreement with the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) and the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO), which manages mackerel, squid and some deep-sea fishing. When signed by both RFMOs, this will increase transshipment oversight in overlap areas, and allow for the sharing of scientific data and best practices.
The NPFC took other actions to increase cooperation across the fishing region, such as committing to the development of a regional observer program. Though there were fishery observers already in the region, these programs were at the national level, and each party was only required to report its total annual catch – but no data on bycatch was required. McKinney said that Pew hopes to see greater real-time data submission in the wake of the program.
The commission also adopted a measure on shark management. The new measure prohibits shark-finning and requires better reporting of shark catches.
The Pew Charitable Trusts has urged the NPFC to move forward on a Port State Measures Conservation Management Measure (CMM). This would allow port inspections even when a vessel is not importing goods, to check for IUU seafood. Carrier activity is currently high, but there are no port inspections in the NPFC area, McKinney said.
In terms of quota, Japan’s Fisheries Agency announced that the TAC for Pacific saury on the high seas in the NPFC convention waters for 2023 and 2024 was reduced from the current 198,000 metric tons (MT) to 150,000 MT, while the annual catch for the entire distribution area was reduced from the current 333,750 MT to 250,000 MT. The new TAC was set higher than proposed by Japan, but lower than proposed by South Korea.
The actual catch in 2022 was only about 92,000 MT, while Japan’s catch was a mere 17,910 MT. In this context, the TAC limit is likely to be much higher than the actual number of fish that can be caught, and so – barring a huge and unexpected increase in the stock – the TAC is effectively meaningless.
To protect juvenile saury, members of the NPFC agreed to prohibit fishing from June to July east of 170 degrees east longitude, and reduce the number of fishing vessels by 10 percent from the 2018 baseline, or limit the fishing period.
Another issue not mentioned in the NPFC’s press release regarding the results of the meeting is transparency in management. In February of 2021, Pew published an article, “North Pacific Fisheries Commission’s Poor Transparency Is Hurting Sustainability,” citing a lack of access for NGOs to the small group’s technical meetings that make recommendations to the full NPFC.
The lack of transparency, is in direct contrast to the NPFC’s own conventions on transparency, according to McKinney. Article 18 of the convention establishing the NPFC specifically mandates that NGOs have the ability to access the commission's meetings.
“Representatives from intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations concerned with matters relevant to the implementation of this convention shall be afforded the opportunity to participate in the meetings of the commission and its subsidiary bodies as observers or otherwise as members of the commission deem appropriate and as provided for in the rules of procedure that the commission shall adopt,” Article 18 reads. “The procedures shall not be unduly restrictive in this respect. The intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations shall be given timely access to pertinent information subject to the rules and procedures that the commission may adopt.”
Pew contends that it and other NGOs have been denied access to the small group meetings, and have not been given access to documents such as draft management measures, compliance, and scientific reports, and other information pertinent to commission decisions.
“The small working group has developed transparency protocols that were reviewed at the TCC in order to improve observer access to those meetings and to facilitate greater NGO and observer support,” McKinney said. “But, unfortunately there’s still some disagreement amongst members as to if, how, and why observers should participate in these small working group meetings. NPFC does not have a legal advisor in the same way that WCPFC does – at the [finance and administration committee] meeting, they determined they do not need one. But I think there’s some general disagreement about whether the protocols are necessary, given that the convention, as written, should already allow for observer participation. But the protocols themselves would hopefully facilitate greater, more formalized participation that would make some members more comfortable.”
The full meeting report is expected to be released to the public just over a month from the close of the meeting to allow the NPFC members to review it first.
Photo courtesy of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission
