Nauru is now a discard-free fishing zone

The problem of regulatory discards – of fish being thrown away at sea after being caught because of catch quotas or size limits – is a major global topic of concern at the moment, especially in Europe.

In the UK, the celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has led a campaign against the “unethical and wasteful practice” of discarding fish at sea through a hard-hitting series of TV documentaries. Today, the EU Fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, unveiled a plan to amend the EU Common Fisheries Policy and reduce discards. 

Well, the Nauru Fisheries and Marine Resources Authority wants to make an announcement: 

Nauru is already a discard-free fishing zone.

 

There are two main fisheries in Nauru’s 320,000 square kilometres of fisheries waters:

The artisanal fishery, with Nauruans operating small boats within territorial waters close to shore, is a discard-free fishery simply because Nauruans do not waste fish. Everything is taken home. Some is sold. Some is given to the extended family and friends, and the rest is consumed directly.

The tuna purse-seine fishery operating offshore within the exclusive economic zone is a much larger fishery. Fish that were too small to fetch a good price at market used to be occasionally discarded in favour of larger fish (a process known as “highgrading”). But since the start of 2010 Nauru, along with the other Parties to the Nauru Agreement, has required that all catch be retained on board and landed and has required a Pacific Island observer to be aboard each purse-seine vessel at all times to ensure that this, and other national regulatory measures, are followed.

In short, the small island developing nation of Nauru is moving towards the head of the pack when it comes to applying “best practice” in oceanic fisheries management. Perhaps this is the result of small size – small administrations in small nations have fewer layers insulating the people from top-level decision-makers, and are relatively quick on their toes. Or perhaps it is the result of the excellent service that Nauru receives as a result of sharing and pooling marine management and assessment advisory and support services in partnership with its small-island neighbours.

Parties to the Nauru Agreement meet in Tarawa

The 27th special meeting of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Management of Fisheries of Common Interest (usually known as the "PNA Group") is meeting in Tarawa, Kiribati, at the moment. The meeting will culminate next week in a Ministerial session, where a decision is expected on the form of the institution that will be set up to facilitate the specialised fisheries development aspirations of the PNA Group of countries*

The new PNA institution will facilitate issues such as

• trading tuna fishing allocations (vessel-days) between members - possibly pooling of vessel-days and joint licencing of foreign tuna vessels;
• PNA national observer placements;
• PNA national crew placement aboard licenced tuna fishing vessels

Joint development options for PNA members in the tuna industry will be explored and it is expected that a PNA Tuna Corporation will also be established.

PNA members have already emphasised that this specialised institution will not weaken the role of the Forum Fisheries Agency. The PNA was set up in 1982 and has a long-established role as a specialised sub-group of FFA, concentrating on the management of the purse-seine fishery. However, FFA is an intergovernmental policy-level secretariat, and is not set up to run commercial operations. The new PNA institution will have a structure that facilitates joint commercially-oriented operations.

PNA members will continue to be FFA members and will will continue to draw upon the services that FFA provides to its members, and PNA members will continue to contribute to FFA decisions. The new PNA institution will be complementary and will actually strengthen the ability of the region to make effective decisions concerning the management of western and central Pacific tuna fisheries - decisions such as the FAD-fishing limitation, the high seas pockets closure, the requirement for 100% observer coverage, and the onboard retention of all purse-seine catch that were spearheaded by the PNA in 2007, supported by the FFA membership, and eventually promulgated across the entire WCPFC region.



A tuna purse-seiner



*The PNA Group currently consists of Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.

New Fisheries Regulations Approved by Cabinet

The Nauru Government has just approved two sets of new Regulations under the Fisheries Act to implement recent regional decisions improving the management of tuna fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean and the PNA subregion.

The Nauru Fishing Licence (FAD_Closure) Regulations 2009 give expression to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Ccommission decision (in CMM 2008-01) to ban fishing by purse-seiners on Fish Aggregation Devices and floating objects in the months of August and September 2009. This short term ban will end when these Regulations are repealed on October 1 2009 and will be replaced on 1st January 2010 by the Nauru Fisheries (PNA 3rd Implementing Arrangement) Regulations 2009, which include a 3 month ban by fishing by purse-seiners on Fish Aggregation Devices and floating objects from July to September (inclusive) of each year.

Nauru citizens should note that this FAD fishing ban only applies to industrial purse-seine vessels fishing outside the 12-mile limit of Nauru's Territorial Sea. It does not apply to fishing on the FADs deployed by NFMRA for the use of small-scale fishing boats.

The closure is not because "FADs are bad" but because it allows the PNA countries to fine-tune the industrial fishery catch composition - to reduce the proportion of bigeye and yellowfin and increase the proportion of skipjack in the purse-seine catch. The skipjack stock is in good health, but the industrial catches of bigeye and yellowfin need to be reduced.

FADs are considered to be environmentally-friendly in a coastal, small-scale fishery context. They reduce searching time and thus reduce fuel usage and improve safety at sea. Maintaining and replacing the coastal FADs will be a major part NFMRA's coastal fisheries strategy and contribute to improving Nauru food security.


A fish aggregation device, yesterday


The second set of regulations, the Nauru Fisheries (PNA Third Implementing Arrangement) Regulations 2009, give legal expression in Nauru waters to the Third Implementing Arrangement of the Nauru Agreement and also implement the remainder of Nauru's obligations under WCPFC CMM 2008-01). These Regulations come into force on January 1, 2010.

These Regulations, working in concert with similar regulations enacted by all the countries party to the Nauru Agreement, deny licences to fish within the waters of all PNA countries to any vessel which -

• fishes in the high seas areas enclosed largely by PNA exclusive economic zones (EEZs)
• sets nets on Fish Aggregation Devices (FAD) in the months July-September inclusive
• discards any catch at sea (with certain reasonable exceptions)
• does not carry a certified observer aboard at all times

This arrangement has been described as one of the most potentially effective decisions taken by a regional tuna management arrangement anywhere in the world to date, and the closure of the high seas pockets has been hailed by conservation organisations as a significant step towards effective management and conservation of sustainable regional fish stocks.

Again, these regulations apply only to industrial vessels fishing in the EEZ outside the 12-mile limit of the Nauru Territorial Sea. They do not apply to small-scale nearshore fishing boats.



The two high seas pockets closed by the PNA 3rd Implementing Arrangement



PNA logo design competition result

The entries for the PNA Logo Design Competition that was publicised earlier this year were voted upon by national representatives to the 28th PNA Meeting, and the winning design was endorsed at the PNA Ministers Meeting held in Niue on 17th May 2009.

Although eight countries (Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu ) are Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), only four countries submitted designs. But in total, 35 logo designs were submitted by 11 individuals from these 4 countries, and most were of extremely high quality.

A Nauru entry made it through to the shortlist of five, but the final winner was Marshall Islands student Kelly Schellhase, who will receive the prize of US$2,500 as soon as copyright ownership formalities have been settled. 

The PNA logo will form part of the letterhead for official communications from the PNA Chair, and will be the logo of the new organisation that has been proposed to assist parties to implement PNA joint fishery development initiatives and management arrangements.

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Note: PNA stands for the Parties to the “Nauru Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Management of Fisheries of Common Interest”. The chairship of the PNA Group rotates between Parties, and Nauru handed over to Kiribati last month.

Nauru hands over PNA Chair to Kiribati

The Chairship of the Officials Meeting of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) was handed over by Charleston Deiye - CEO of the Nauru Fisheries and Marine Resources Authority - to Kintoba Tearo, Kiribati's Director of Fisheries, this week at the PNA Annual Meeting in Niue. The Chairship of the PNA Ministerial meeting will be handed over by the Honourable Roland Kun, Minister for Education and Fisheries to Kiribati on 17th May.

The last year, with Nauru in the chair, has been a very significant one for the 8 PNA countries (Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu). The 3rd Implementing Arrangement of the Nauru Agreement was approved by Parties in May 2008 and the Vessel Days Scheme under the Palau Arrangement swung into gear.

These new measures apply several innovative and forward-looking actions to promote the conservation and management of the tuna stocks on which the PNA countries depend. These include:

• a major change in the way that fishing opportunities are allocated, replacing flag-based licence-limits with zone-based fishing days limits, thus shifting the balance of control away from foreign fleets towards Pacific Island EEZ custodians;
• closing two significant high seas areas to all forms of tuna fishing from January 1, 2010 - a measure that was later taken up by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission meeting in December 2008,
• a ban on fishing on drifting fish aggregation devices for part of each year, to reduce the impact of purse-seine fishing on juvenile bigeye tuna - a species threatened by overfishing.

The battle is not yet over. It is likely that further restrictions will be needed to ensure that the impact of fishing - particularly longline fishing - on bigeye tuna is reduced to acceptable levels, and there still remain some purse-seine vessels - flagged by powerful geopolitical interests - that need to be included in the effort limits under the Vessel Days Scheme.

Nauru wishes Kiribati all the best in chairing the PNA group through to May 2010. Nauru will continue to play a full part in the discussion and the implementation of further innovations in the drive to both protect our tuna, and to develop optimum benefit from the Pacific Islands regional resource through increasing cooperation with our PNA neighbours.

Nauru is one of the most tuna-dependent economies in the world, as well as one of the world's smallest countries, and joint action within the PNA gives us considerably more bargaining power in the task of developing sustainable national income from what is now the biggest tuna fishery in the world.



Symbols of the two cornerstones of the Nauru economy



New foreign fishing regulations in process

Nauru is one of the countries party to the 1982 "Nauru Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Management of Fisheries of Common Interest", along with the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu. 

The Nauru Agreement is very influential. Over the years, the Agreement has provided most of the impetus for improving the management of purse-seine tuna fisheries in the western tropical Pacific region, both at the policy level, and the detailed practical level through its various Implementing Arrangements.

The main point of the Nauru Agreement is that all eight Parties are applying the same management measures, and the same terms and conditions for access, to all tuna purse-seine vessels fishing in their waters. PNA (Parties to the Nauru Agreement) waters cover most of the best purse-seine fishing areas in the Western Pacific (a total of 15 million square kilometres), and thus through sub-regional cooperation, the PNA can essentially control the management of this fishery.

What is particularly significant is that the Western Pacific Tropical tuna fishery is in better shape than any other tuna fishery in the world. Although Pacific Island countries have concerns that Bigeye Tuna will become overfished if fishing effort is not reduced, overall these fisheries are not overfished - the skipjack stock in particular (the main tuna stock) is in good health - and actions are already being taken to reduce the impact on bigeye tuna to avoid it becoming overfished. The relative health of these Pacific fisheries is due in no small part to the strong control exerted by coastal States, particularly the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, whereas tuna fisheries management in other regions is dominated by industrial fishing interests.

The PNA countries jointly agreed on the PNA third Implementing Arrangement at a PNA Ministers Meeting held in Palau in May 2008. Amongst other things, they agreed that any vessel found fishing for tuna in high seas areas enclosed by PNA exclusive economic zones would have its licences to fish in all PNA EEZs cancelled. There is also a ban on using drifting Fish Aggregation Devices for 3 months of the year and a requirement for purse-seiners to carry an observer aboard at all times. These measures will come into force on January 1st 2010.

There is a long lead-time between the signing of the agreement and its coming-into-force because it will take some time for regional and national observer programmes to gear up for 100% purse-seine coverage (currently it is around 20%) and to get the necessary regulations in place.

NFMRA is currently in the process of ensuring that Nauru can play its full part in this Agreement. A national observer programme is being started up, including the appointment of an Observer Programme Manager and obtaining accredited training for a cadre of Nauru observers, and also in developing regulations to put the 3rd Implementing Arrangement into practice.

These regulations have already been drafted with the assistance of Parliamentary Counsel and the Forum Fisheries Agency, and should be presented to Cabinet shortly. They will be posted on this website as soon as they are approved. However, the basic framework of the 3rd Implementing Arrangement is already agreed and it only remains to enact this under Nauru law.

Another shorter, temporary, set of regulations, to implement an additional measure agreed within the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission - to prohibit purse-seiners fishing on drifting FADs and other floating objects during the months of August and September 2009 - will also be presented to Cabinet for approval.

These new conditions will subsequently be inserted in the conditions of all licences to fish in the Nauru EEZ by foreign fishing vessels.

It should be noted that Nauru small scale fishing boats and fishers are exempt from all of these rules, which are intended to tighten up controls on large-scale industrial fishing across the western pacific sub-region. And these measures will not limit the rights of PNA members, including Nauru, to increasingly participate in the industrial fishery in the PNA area.


FAD buoys aboard a purse-seiner