NEWS: *NEW INTERNATIONAL BOARDING AND INSPECTION SCHEME* for fishing vessels on the high seas in the western and central Pacific Ocean.... See details.

The PIRO International Fisheries Program provides policy advice on and technical and administrative support for, international fisheries agreements and related issues in the western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO).

The need for international cooperation in fisheries management is driven by the highly migratory nature of many of the targeted and bycatch species and the exploitation of common resources outside areas of national jurisdiction, on the high seas. The high seas are regarded as global commons, accessible to anyone. With open access and no defined mechanism for regulating the use of the resources, the result can be overexploitation such as overfishing.

The term “highly migratory species” (HMS) derives from Article 64 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea . Annex I to the Convention lists species considered highly migratory by parties to the Convention. In general, these species (such as tuna and billfish) have a wide geographic distribution, both on the high seas and inside the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of many nations, and undertake migrations of significant but variable distances. They are pelagic species, which means they do not live near the sea floor, and mostly live in the open ocean, although they may spend part of their life cycle in nearshore waters. These species are harvested by domestic and foreign fishing fleets. The U.S. accounts for a relatively small fraction of the HMS caught in the WCPO. Click here for a table of tuna catches in the WCPO by nation.

Many bycatch species of concern (e.g. various marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles and sharks) possess similar attributes to target fish species, such as having wide geographic distribution and undertaking significant migrations.

The primary international regional fisheries management organization (RFMO) for HMS in this region is the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). Some Hawaii-based vessels also conduct limited fishing to the east of 150° west and therefore enter the area of competence of another RFMO, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC). The participation of the U.S. purse seine fleet operating in the western Pacific is governed by the Treaty on Fisheries Between the Governments of Certain Pacific Island States and the Government of the United States of America (South Pacific Tuna Treaty- SPTT), which provides for U.S. vessels to fish in the EEZs of certain Pacific Island countries.

Overfishing and habitat damage particularly from deep-sea trawling on the high seas is prompting the initiation of multilateral agreements to address this problem in the north and south Pacific Ocean. At the third international meeting on the establishment of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) that took place in Chile in April 2007, interim measures were agreed upon. Discussions will continue in Canberra, Australia, from 6-10 October 2008.

In January 2007 delegations from Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States, met in Tokyo to continue discussing possible arrangements for management of north western Pacific Ocean high seas bottom trawl fisheries. Participants recognized that creation of any formal arrangement would be a lengthy process and that, pending development of any such arrangement, more urgent action is needed in respect to these fisheries. They adopted interim measures (Jan 2007, pdf 84kB) and agreed to continue discussions on this issue on an accelerated basis. A meeting was held in May 2008 in Vladivostok, Russia and Japan agreed to hold the next meeting in October 2008 in Tokyo, Japan.

Images courtesy of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Noumea, New Caledonia