Pacific call out big fishing nations on catch data-- Bigeye crisis link to high seas, reporting loopholes
15 Aug 2014 | by ffa.int
Pacific nations have slammed major fishing nations using loopholes to duck out of properly reporting their fishing catches in the Pacific. Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) members attending the 10th Scientific Committee meeting of the WCPFC say the missing data is critical to help prevent overfishing in Pacific waters.
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.”
