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Pacific Nations Ban Tuna Boats to Stop Stock Collapse

(Bloomberg) Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and six other Pacific nations banned tuna boats from an area of ocean almost the size of Alaska to save the fish from a repeat of the collapse of Atlantic cod fisheries in the 1980s.

The island nations prohibited fishing boats from two areas of the Pacific Commons, stretches of international waters surrounded by coastal waters belonging to the countries. The ban went into effect yesterday to prevent destruction of bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks and sustain an industry worth $3 billion a year in the Pacific.

Governments and fishing companies aren’t doing enough to prevent the decline of tuna stocks as they put the demands of the fishing industry and consumers above the sustainability of marine life, conservationists say.

“The balance of power between the fishing fleets and tuna has shifted too far in favor of the fleets,” Callum Roberts, a marine conservation biologist at the University of York in England, said in a telephone interview. “We are still catching too many fish.”

Lower catches may tighten supplies in Japan, the main market for the region’s fish and the world’s largest for sashimi-grade tuna, where prices are rising due to depleted supply, rising fuel costs and competition from the U.S., European Union and China.

The wholesale price of bigeye tuna in Tokyo rose to 930 yen in April from 774 yen three years earlier, while the price of yellowfin rose to 700 yen from 538 in the same period, according to the latest statistics from Japan’s agriculture ministry.

Failing Measures

The states imposed the fishing ban after the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, which governs the region’s stocks of migratory fish including tuna, failed to strengthen conservation measures at its annual meeting in December.

To enforce the ban, tuna vessels wanting licenses to fish in the countries’ exclusive economic zones, also rich in tuna stocks, will have to agree not to enter the protected areas.

The group also made observers mandatory on vessels operating in their territories and banned the use of fish aggregating devices, or buoys used to attract tuna and blamed for over- fishing of juvenile fish, for three months a year.

Using marine reserves to sustain stocks of migratory fish is still disputed in the scientific community. Some tuna have been proven to travel as far as 45,000 miles in 16 months, according to Tagging of Pacific Predators, making them difficult to protect.

 

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