Pacific call out big fishing nations on catch data-- Bigeye crisis link to high seas, reporting loopholes
Tiga Galo – Tokelau chair of the FFA Science Working Group – notes one of the obligations that all members signed up to when they joined the WCPFC was to provide full catch and effort data on the operations of their fishing vessels in the Convention Area. “Yet, here we are 10 years down the track, and there are still four Asian CCMs that are hiding behind the temporary deferment that allowed them time to amend their domestic regulations - laws that might have technically prevented them from supplying this operational data at the time of agreement.”