After an emergency meeting, the World Tuna Purse-Seine Organization (WTPO) agreed to lessen the purchase of vessel fishing days by at least 25 percent to stabilize the market, which has recently been hit by record- low skipjack prices.
WTPO President Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said in an email to SeafoodSource that the group’s emergency meeting in Manila, Philippines, on 13 November was organized to discuss ways to manage the crisis, which has been impacting tuna fleets’ revenue as a result of the skipjack price decline. Skipjack prices have tumbled from USD 1,600 (EUR 1,450) per metric ton in March to USD 900 (EUR 818) per metric ton today.
“We came up with the agreement by meeting face-to-face in Manila … [to] analyze the situation in all the tuna-fishing ocean regions,” he said.
Cutting the purchase of permits for fishing days was a risk-mitigation measure, Laurel Jr. said. The agreement was reached by consensus of all WTPO members.
The vessel day scheme (VDS) under which fishing days are sold sets limits on the number of fishing days allowed in the region, and the decision on the number of days allocated to the VDS is primarily decided by the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) member countries – eight Pacific Island countries whose waters collectively supply around 50 percent of the world’s skipjack tuna. They are Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.
The purse-seine fishing day benchmark is from USD 8,000 (EUR 7,275).
The group came up with an agreement after assessing “What is happening now and what we think will happen shortly, plus what we need to do to ensure sustainability and stability in the future,” Laurel Jr. told SeafoodSource.
Members want to allow the market to recover from the crisis and one of those measures was to purchase fewer fishing days, Laurel Jr. said. The agreement did not say when that reduction would begin, however.
At this stage, Laurel said, fishing is still slow and many fishing companies have decided to put their vessels in drydock for maintenance due to the low fish prices.
“So there is no real reason to do action as of now as many individual boat owners have strategically called in their boats to port to take the opportunity to maintain the vessels,” he said.
Also at the emergency meeting, WTPO members also agreed to undertake a study on implementing a total allowable catch system, which they plan to present to Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) and Pacific nations once complete.
Photo courtesy of Thor Jorgen Udvang/Shutterstock
