Byline: Claire Heath

Tuna numbers healthy, but WCPO needs harvest controls, says ISSF

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The tuna fisheries of the western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) are in better shape than those of other oceans, a report just published by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) shows.

The report summarises the state of health of the world’s tuna fisheries. It covers 23 tuna stocks: 6 albacore, 4 bigeye, 4 bluefin, 5 skipjack, and 4 yellowfin stocks. All but bluefin are commercially important in the WCPO.

The report is compiled from official reports of the 5 regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs), including the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), which manages the tuna fisheries of the WCPO.

It backs up research by the Pacific Community that compares the status of tuna populations in the western Pacific, eastern Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. The WCPO is the only area of ocean in which all four tuna are abundant and are not overfished.

Graph of numbers of four species of tuna in eastern Pacific, western Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, and state of health of tuna populations using green, yellow and red code. Graph: Pacific Community
Tuna populations in the WCPO (second column) are much healthier than in other oceans. Catch and stock status for albacore (ALB), bigeye (BET), skipjack (SKJ) and yellowfin (YFT) tuna in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO), western Pacific Ocean (WPO), Atlantic Ocean (AO) and Indian Ocean (IO). Figure: Pacific Community.

Although the ISSF report shows that tuna are abundant enough in the WCPO to be able to withstand fishing at current levels, it points out that there is “no potential” to increase fishing for yellowfin because it is “fully exploited”.

ISSF rated each of the 23 global stocks using 3 factors: abundance, fishing mortality, and environment. Each factor is colour-coded green (good, sustainable), yellow (warning, borderline) or orange (unsustainable or insufficient management).

Abundance relates to not just to populations numbers, but also looks at whether fish have been allowed to grow and reproduce at their most productive level.

Mortality is a measure of how intense the fishing effort is, and is a way of understanding whether a population is being overfished.

Environment refers mostly to action to minimise bycatch, species such as sharks, turtles and seabirds, as well as juvenile tuna, that aren’t targeted for fishing but end up in the catch. Some species face extinction, partly as a result of commercial fishing. Bycatch is usually noted accurately when it the catch is monitored independently.

Need to improve harvest controls and monitoring of longline fishing

The report shows that all RFMOs need to manage stocks better, even where tuna are abundant.

ISSF’s particular focus was harvest controls. Although there are no binding target reference points (TRPs) or harvest controls in the WCPO yet, it notes that a few conservation and management measures (CMMs) include interim targets. CMM 2014-06 calls for harvest strategies for each kind of tuna and lists the elements that should be included. CMM 2015-06 sets an interim TRP for skipjack tuna.

CMM 2020-01 contains bridging rules for bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin that include benchmark numbers (expressed as spawning biomass) to be maintained. However, ISSF said that this CMM was too complex because it included “many ‘either/or’ choices, exemptions or exclusions” and that decisions were yet to be made about some measure. These made it “impossible to predict the outcomes in terms of actual future catch and effort levels”.

WCPFC is not alone: there are few TRPs and harvest controls operating in other oceans either.

The other major concern noted in the report is the lack of independent monitoring of longline fleets, which ISSF labelled as “deficient” in all oceans and among nearly all fisheries where longline fishing occurs. Without monitoring, it is impossible to know how much wildlife becomes bycatch. Longline fleets are notoriously difficult to monitor.

Strengths of WCPFC management also noted

The report notes that the interim arrangements to control the tuna harvest in the WCPO are “robust” and “ensure the sustainability of bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin tuna stocks”. They include:

  • banning the use of fish-aggregating devices (FADs) from 1 July to 30 September each year, between the latitudes of 20 °N and 20 °S, in both exclusive economic zones and high seas
  • imposing an additional FAD closure of 2 months
  • requiring that all FADs prevent the entanglement of sharks, turtles and other species
  • limiting the number of drifting FADs, fishing days and, for some vessels, freezing capacity
  • requiring that all fish caught be retained, even if they have no market value or haven’t been targeted for fishing
  • requiring that all purse seine vessels have an independent observer on board.

ISSF reports that the global catch of albacore, bigeye, bluefin, skipjack and yellowfin in 2019 was 5.3 million tonnes. It said that 65% of stocks of tuna were at healthy levels of abundance, 13% were overfished, and 22% were in between.

Worldwide, 87.6% of the catch was from healthily abundant stocks.

About 52% of the world’s production of tuna was from the WCPO.

The report, Status of the world fisheries for tuna: March 2021, can be downloaded from the ISSF website.

Tighter controls on the way for plastic pollution in the WCPO

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Pacific island countries are behind a study to gauge the amount of plastic waste that is dumped at sea by tuna fishing vessels working in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO).

The study is also judging how well vessel operators are complying with the main rule to control marine pollution in the WCPO. This is the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) conservation and management measure (CMM) 2017-04. The rule, which came into effect on 1 January 2019, prohibits the dumping of any plastics into the ocean.

The study into the disposal of plastic waste has been commissioned by the Oceanic Fisheries Management Project (OFMP2) of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA). It is preliminary to FFA member considering possible ways of strengthening CMM 2017-04.

FFA has noted that, despite WCPFC’s “excellent step towards curbing drastic levels” of plastic marine pollution, “the reality of current plastic disposal methods is in stark contrast to the intention of the measure”.

The Chief Technical Officer of the OFMP2 for FFA, Hugh Walton, said that, although the passing of CMM 2017-04 was a “landmark win” for FFA members, it had not necessarily equated to a decrease in the amount of waste dumped at sea. Countries had had more than a year from the adoption of the CMM in 2017 to consider the means needed once it came into force.

Clause 2 of the CMM states that: “CCMs shall prohibit their fishing vessels operating in the WCPFC Convention Area from discharging any plastic (including plastic packaging, items containing plastic and polystyrene) but not including fishing gear.”

Mr Walton said most of the other clauses did not prohibit actions, but merely encouraged signatories to prohibit their vessels from dumping waste at sea. And there was no mechanism to enforce clause 2.

“We hope this study will point to ways we can align the intention and the reality of waste disposal,” Mr Walton said.

One of the three consultants doing the study is fisheries adviser Francisco Blaha, who worked on commercial fishing vessels for many years. He has teamed up with Robert Lee, who also has a lot of experience on fishing vessels, and Alice Leney, a hands-on expert in waste disposal in the WCPO.

“We all come from operational experience,” Mr Blaha said.

“We believe it is important that we understand what it is like working in the industry. This is partly because we can’t go onto the vessels at the moment so we have to do a desktop study only.

“But also because there is this whole belief that fishers dump waste at sea by pure malice. We know what it’s like on the boats and we know that’s not true.

“People do things because there are incentives to do it that way, or because they don’t know a better way. Space is always a problem on fishing boats, so we need to consider what the main sources of plastic waste other than fishing gear, how much plastic waste is produced, and what is currently done with it in different fleets and jurisdictions. Then we can think about better ways to deal with plastics. How can people be incentivised, with the limited options of surveillance that exist at the moment? That, in a nutshell, is what we are investigating.”

On a purse-seine tuna fishing vessel, buoys, netting, and used plastic salt bags. Photo: Francisco Blaha.
Once emptied of their salt, plastic salt bags are often re-used in the construction of fish-aggregating devices. Photo: Francisco Blaha.

The study team is building on what is known about the disposal of waste plastics at sea from a 2018 study commissioned by FFA and a 2017 study from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme.

“We already have quite a lot of problems with rubbish. If we’re going to take fishing vessel waste back to land, this will have a big impact on the rubbish on the islands. Other than Suva, all the other dumps are saturated: there is no more room. The highest point of Marshall Islands is the rubbish dump.”

The study team will look to quantify how much plastic waste is generated in the exclusive economic zones of FFA members and in the nearby high seas, and group it by sources such as vessel size, gear used (longline or purse seine) and the number of crew members. They will look at estimate volumes produced, disposed of overboard and brought ashore. They will investigate the impact in the ports that attract a great deal of fishing traffic of disposing of waste there.

Then they will summarise the mechanisms for disposal that could be applied, and recommend strategies and practices that will lead to better application of the present regulatory frameworks.

“If we look by type of vessel, the area where we have the biggest volumes is longlining, as there are numerous fleets. But also purse-seine is quite remarkable,” Mr Blaha said.

“There is only 5% observer coverage on longliners, but from what we know, about 60% of what goes into the water is plastic. On purse-seiners, with 100% observer coverage, it’s 37%.

“We have identified that the main source of plastic waste for longliners is the liners in the bait boxes, and for purse-seiners, it’s the salt bags.” (Salt is used to make a brine that is used in freezing the fish.)

He said it was difficult to estimate the volume of these items, because there were so many variables to take into account.

“Let’s look at longlining. How many hooks get soaked into the ocean? There were over 800 million of them in the WCPO in 2019. Then we work out bait size and weight, and adjust for the type of tuna being caught. For tropical tunas, you may be baiting 100 hooks per box, but for albacore it may be 150 hooks, so the number of boxes used varies,” Mr Blaha said.

“With the salt bags in the purse-seine fleet, it is complicated by cultural variations in the ways people operate, for example in how the brine is prepared or how much you reuse the brine, or if you flood wells for unloading.

“With crew waste, we look at crew-generated plastics: food wraps, cups, water bottles. The totals depend on the number of crew, not just on the gear on the vessels,” he said.

Volumes were less difficult to calculate when vessels came into ports than if they stayed on the high seas, although there were still many variables to consider.

“It’s way more complex that we ever thought it would be – and we knew it would be complex,” Mr Blaha said.

“This study is the first step. This is an area that is only going to grow. It needs to be fine-tuned in the future. But for this step, we wanted to make sure that whoever reads this knows we considered as much as we can for the estimates, that this is not a back-of-the-envelope estimate.

“How any recommendations can be enforced is always the big question in anything related to fisheries.”

One way to verify compliance with CMM 2017-04 might be to strengthen the capture of marine pollution data using the electronic monitoring cameras on board that are increasingly being used on fishing vessels to help monitor compliance with other fishing rules.

The team was also exploring an idea that visitors to national parks in countries such as New Zealand and Australia are familiar with: that you take out with you what you brought in.

“If the carriers bring the bait, bring the salt bags, they can take them away again, as carriers may have incinerators on board, or at least more space. We are also exploring the idea of bonds: they get their bond money back when they show that the rubbish has gone back with them,” Mr Blaha said.

As with a study FFA has commissioned on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, a draft of the marine pollution report will be discussed at the annual FFA Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Woking Group meeting at the end of March, with the final report to be presented to the annual meeting of the Forum Fisheries Committee in May.

FFA study to enhance monitoring and lower risk of IUU fishing

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For the first time, the volume and value of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing for tuna is being measured for the whole western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO).

The first quantification of IUU fishing, done in 2016, was for the area covered by the members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Commission (FFA). The current study will update 2016 estimates. 

Duncan Souter, of MRAG Asia Pacific, which is conducting the study, said the research team was investigating three tuna fisheries: purse seine, tropical longline, and southern longline fishing.

“We are expecting 2020 to give us a more accurate picture of both volume and value,” Mr Souter said. MRAG also conducted the 2016 study.

FFA will use the results of the study against the performance indicators of the Regional Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Strategy 2018–2023. Two key things they are interested in doing is focusing on risk mitigation for setting better benchmarks for operations that lessen IUU fishing and designing better methods of dealing with offenders.

Quantification is difficult to do but shows how to improve MCS

The quantification is complex work. To estimate volume and value of IUU fishing, the researchers must first differentiate between various types of IUU fishing. These may be as diverse as unlicenced fishing, misreporting by licenced fishers, a “whole range” of types of non-compliance with licence conditions, and post-harvest problems such as illegal transhipping.

Then the amount of IUU fishing in the various categories must be measured, and this requires using different tools for each kind so that they get useful information. Mr Souter said that in some areas, for example misreporting in logbooks of purse-seine vessels, there was quite good data. But data on some other types of IUU fishing activity was patchy.

Mr Souter said the 2016 study returned some interesting results.

“People conjure up pictures of vast fleets of pirate boats. In fact, unlicenced fishing contributed quite a small amount to volume and value. IUU fishing was dominated by licenced vessels not complying,” Mr Souter said.

“This has important implications: one of the biggest benefits of these sorts of studies is that it gives you a better idea of which kinds of IUU fishing are contributing the most. You can then look at it in a much more targeted way, because each kind of IUU fishing requires a different monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) approach.”

The benefit of having a second study was that FFA would be able to track changes in the kind of activity occurring. 

“The study is primarily to inform FFA on their MCS approaches. You can target MCS much better when you know the profile of IUU fishing in the region. You can also track whether previous investments have worked,” Mr Souter said.

Two officers check log sheets of a Taiwanese longliner in Solomon Islands photo Francisco Blaha
Officers check the logsheets of a Taiwanese longliner in Solomon Islands. Photo: Francisco Blaha.

Improve data and monitoring to improve compliance

There were other benefits.

“It’s not so much that you need to improve compliance, but that you need to improve data, improve monitoring,” Mr Souter said. 

In 2016, different data was collected on each risk. The research team made a best estimate, and came up with a minimum and maximum range of the probability of each risk occurring. Weak data gives a larger range and less confidence in knowledge about that risk.

By getting better data in 2020, Mr Souter said MRAG would be able to narrow the range values, which would give them more accurate estimates. Some ideas about where the worst problems were might change.

Better data and monitoring would allow FFA to identify risks better, and how to deal with them.

“Generally, FFA and their members do quite a good job of regional coordination of MCS. They’ve taken some strong and very coordinated measures that you don’t see in some other ocean basins. They work well together.”

He said that, overall, they had much better data this time round, particularly on illegal transhipping. 

“We’ve tried to take apples versus apples approach to the two studies, so you can make direct comparisons,” Mr Souter said.

A draft of the report will be discussed at the annual FFA MCS Woking Group meeting at the end of this month, with the final report to be presented to the annual meeting of the Forum Fisheries Committee in May.

WCPO tuna fisheries soon to be managed by the whole ecosystem

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If the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and its members have it their way, they will soon be managing tuna and other migratory fish in their region by taking into account the needs of the whole ecosystem, and not just the fish.

Their ecosystem approach would encompass the effects of climate change. 

FFA and other regional fisheries organisations of the western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) have already begun to take an ecosystem-wide approach to managing stocks of tuna and other commercially valuable migratory fish. Coastal fisheries, too, are increasingly being managed in a holistic way that encompasses whole ecosystems.

FFA and its partners are seeking funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to make the approach mainstream so that it becomes integral to national and regional fisheries policies, operations and scientific research.

The Deputy Director-General of FFA, Mr Matt Hooper, said that taking a whole-ecosystem approach to the threat of climate change would help the states of the WCPO to ensure secure supplies of local food and economic wellbeing.

He said an “enormous amount of work” had gone into developing the project.

“It was heartening to see the member countries contributing along with our partners and industry,” Mr Hooper said.

The project would build on the two blocks of work funded by the Pacific Oceanic Fisheries Management Project (OFMP2). This funding will end in June. OFMP2 supports the 14 small island developing states (SIDS) of the WCPO to implement and enforce global, regional and subregional rules and policies that conserve populations of tuna and other commercially important fish. 

The basis of the new project would be two outputs from OFMP2, a Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA) and a Strategic Action Programme that builds on the TDA.

The main objectives of the project are to:

  • strengthen ways of managing the marine ecosystem and the life it supports
  • strengthen scientific monitoring, which will allow fisheries managers to make better-informed decisions on how to protect the ecosystem while sustainably harvesting some of its resources
  • build the capacity of local people to manage the ecosystem within the area that is governed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.

FFA is leading the development of the project, which will involve the 14 SIDS (all of which are members of FFA): Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshal Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. FFA is working closely with other organisations that will be involved, including the Pacific Community (SPC), the Parties to the Nauru Agreement Office (PNAO), the Pacific Island Tuna Industry Association, WWF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

WCPFC17 members agree on way to negotiate new Tropical Tuna Measure in 2021

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A process for negotiating a new Tropical Tuna Measure has been agreed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), paving the way for adoption at the end of next year.

At this year’s annual WCPFC meeting, which finished yesterday, members agreed to roll over the current conservation and management measure, CMM 2018-01, to extend it for another year. 

This means the commission has avoided the problem that its counterpart in the eastern Pacific now has, after it failed to find consensus on the rollover of its equivalent measure and is left with no way of managing fishing for bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin tuna.

CMM 2018-01 was due to expire in February.

The process the WCPFC17 has agreed to was proposed by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA). It will be conducted online.

The Chair of the Forum Fisheries Committee, Mr Eugene Pangelinan, said in a media conference today that work would need to start almost immediately, because negotiations were more difficult online.

“We have a lot of work to do so that by next December we have all the building blocks read for WCPFC to make a decision, not just on the Tropical Tuna Measure, but also on South Pacific albacore, crewing conditions, and observers,” Mr Pangelinan said.

The WCPFC will convene three workshops to develop the replacement measure. The first one will be in April. Development work will continue between workshops.

The conservation and management measure will work towards the adoption of harvest strategies, as laid out in another rule, CMM 2014-06. The harvest strategy would operate hand-in-hand with the Tropical Tuna Measure and conservation and management measures for other species. Harvest strategies are used to manage commercially important species so they remain biologically sustainable while maximising profits from the fisheries.

WCPFC expected that some, and perhaps all, of the workshops would be held virtually. 

Virtual meetings have proven to be unsatisfactory when negotiating details of important decisions. To minimise the problems with this format, the agreement of the process stated that was “essential” that those taking part in developing the next CMM participate cooperatively in sessions between workshops. 

Mr Pangelinan said, “There have been a lot of lessons learned this year. One of the bad things about using this platform is the lack of interpersonal engagement. This can influence outcomes,.”

The process for negotiating the Tropical Tuna Measure needed to include ways of maintaining appropriate discussion and negotiation.

All proposals would have to be put in writing and shared. They would also have to include an assessment of the impact on small island developing states (SIDS), in line with CMM 2013-06. 

This CMM is to ensure the SIDS can participate on an equal footing with wealthier members of WCPFC, and that they do not have to bear unreasonable costs or workload.

One of these is ensuring that SIDS members can participate fully.

The Director-General of FFA, Dr Manu Tupou-Roosen, said in the media conference today, “Our members are very clear about this. Capacity building to be able to work on this virtual platform is as important as being able to sit at the meetings.”

For more information from the Forum Fisheries Agency on WCPFC17, contact Hugh Walton, ph. +677 740 2428, email Hugh.Walton@ffa.int.

Experiments with hanging crane scales could lead to faster transhipping: postcard from Majuro

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A small project to test four types of electronic crane scales may grow into a transhipping process that benefits crews, skippers, vessel managers, scientists and regulators, project members hope.

If their early experiments pay off, the accuracy of weighing catches during transhipment will improve.

After much testing for precision, robustness, ease of use, price, and a few other characteristics, the team has chosen the best performer. Team members need to develop standards that would be workable in the transhipment ports in Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu and Solomon Islands.

The team comprised people from Forum Fisheries Agency, the Pacific Community, and Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority, led by fisheries consultant Francisco Blaha. They secured funding for the project from the Pacific–European Union Marine Partnership program. 

The team hope this process to increase the accuracy of weight monitoring during the slow work of transhipment will become commonplace. If this happens, the people who monitor transhipments will be able to trust the weights as read by the scales, which will free them up to focus on the species composition of transfers.

As Francisco said in a blog post on the project and its possible benefits, “Beside playing with amazing tech, it was great to work with very professional yet relaxed crew.” Photo by Francisco Blaha.

Mending the nets a challenging job: postcard from Noro

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Mending fishing nets is no easy task when the net is from a purse-seiner and may be up to 3,000 metres long and 300–400 metres deep, and weigh 6 tonnes, as in the case of super-seiners.

The design and construction of these nets are complex, as they have to function well in a variety of situations, weather and sea conditions that are pretty challenging. Not only do they have to withstand the complicated mix of forces and tensions during setting and hauling, they also have to cope with the extra stress put on them by being used under potentially different currents from the water surface to the bottom of the net.

Running repairs are done constantly. Many are done on board, but major repairs require a large, flat surface such as a wharf or net yard, and the use of forklifts and other equipment to move the net panels around. Francisco Blaha gives us a better appreciation of the difficulty crews face when repairing nets, at sea and in port. 

Photo by Francisco Blaha.

Women slowly gaining access to more jobs in tuna fisheries, but remain mostly in traditional roles

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Small changes are slowly resulting in opportunities for women to take up a wider range of jobs in the tuna fisheries.

However, researchers have found that most of the options for women remain limited along traditional gender lines.

The researchers assessed how the ways the value chain is governed in tuna fisheries affect the well-being of communities, which includes women’s participation in the economy. They studied two communities in Solomon Islands, Noro and Gizo, both in Western Province, and two communities in Indonesia.

In Solomon Islands, some women were doing well in jobs with greater responsibilities such as technical supervisors or managers in the SolTuna cannery at Noro, or had built up trading businesses and fleets of fishing vessels.

And, in 2019, three women started work as cadets on the National Fisheries Development fishing fleet. Until then, the agency employed only men on its fishing vessels.

Generally, however, few women work on tuna fishing vessels anywhere. In Solomon Islanders, they make up a large part of the workforce once that catch is landed, dominating work on processing lines in factories, and selling raw or processed fish in local markets. 

Female compliance officer and two longline fishing vessels Solomon Islands. Photo Francisco Blaha.
Controlling longline vessels in Solomon Islands … women are slowly becoming a presence across the tuna industry. Photo: Francisco Blaha.

The researchers described their study and findings in the most recent issue of the Women in Fisheries Bulletin, which is published by the Pacific Community.

They said some women were also found in technical, financial and managerial roles, but usually in lower-paid, less powerful positions than their male colleagues. This was the same for tuna that is exported and for tuna sold in local markets for local consumption.

The researchers said that the largest employment opportunities in the tuna fisheries, on fish-processing lines for women, and as general crew of fishing vessels for men, were poorly paid. Two-thirds of the workforce of SolTuna are women, but most of them are in the lowest-paid jobs with the least authority. 

The researchers said that the International Finance Corporation had worked with SolTuna since 2015 to improve opportunities for women, as well as their working conditions.

Women’s work in the tuna fisheries was made more difficult because they were expected to fit paid work around their obligations to care for families and homes, with strong social and cultural values shaping women’s and men’s views on where women could legitimately seek work.

Most women who sell tuna in the Gizo and Noro are involved in small, family-run businesses. (This was different to the situation in Indonesia, where the value chain is more complex and offers more opportunities for women to be involved in or run larger businesses.)

If women were going to take up paid work across the tuna industry in greater numbers, jobs needed to be flexible so women could also meet their extensive family responsibilities.

Laughing woman in orange cap and coverall clothing with paintbrush and box in factory Solomon Islands. Photo Francisco Blaha.
A Solomon Islander at work in tuna processing … women are concentrated in the low-paid jobs. Photo: Francisco Blaha.

Manual on design, technology and use of anchored FADs updated

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A new technical manual on the design of and use of anchored fish-aggregating devices has been released for the Pacific Islands.

The technical manual covers standard designs for different kinds of anchored FADs, and some regional modifications of these. It also discusses technical considerations for the design of upper floatation devices, main lines, and anchors, and considers deployment location and techniques from different kinds of fishing vessels, and maintaining FADs.

The manual improves on a 2005 edition by drawing on the experience and lessons learned by users of FADs across the Pacific. 

The manual is published by the Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems (FAME) Division of the Pacific Community (SPC).

The new manual doesn’t replace the old ones, which FAME says still contains useful technical information. However, FAME said it became clear in 2016 that the older manual did need updating, when Pacific FAD users came together to share their knowledge and experiences in FAD design and innovation.

They said information that was still relevant in the 2005 edition had not been repeated in the new manual, but was referred to.

The manual is free to download in individual sections or as a complete manual. The 2005 manual can also be downloaded from the SPC website.

composite photo. Left image 3 men with leaves, floats, anchors, making anchored fish-aggregating devices. Right photo: two men on a small boat at sea feeding anchored FADs into the water. Photos: Forum Fisheries Agency.
Construction and deployment of FADs, Nauru. Photo: Forum Fisheries Agency.

Note: this post was amended on 18 March 2020 to replace images.

SPC outlines ways to improve women’s involvement in fisheries

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SPC has published short reports into ways that women can have a greater say in fisheries management in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu.

The reports are a snapshot of information on and analysis of the how women participate in fishing in the four countries. 

Each report summarises the steps the country has taken so far to improve women’s involvement. These are mostly in policies. It also highlights strengths and weaknesses in current arrangements, and discusses political factors and social norms that prevent or deter women from becoming more actively involved.

These points are used to list ways in which women could become more equal participants in both decision-making about and control of fisheries resources. They include learning from women themselves what they need and want, targeting women when delivering extension services, and implementing gender-equity policies that already exist.

SPC says the reports are intended to stimulate discussion about how to make improvements in the organisation’s Social Development Programme and Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems (FAME) Division.

It says the recommendations are also relevant to the national government of the country, and the country’s external partners in development. 

Women often don’t see themselves as fishers

In all four countries, many women do not see themselves as fishers, even though they provide seafood for the family. They and the men in their families see only the men as the fishers. 

The reports note that women also have less time to be involved in paid work, community decision-making and development activities, as they do most of the reproductive work and caregiving in the family and the community, and don’t have time for other things.

SPC writes that “care must be taken to consult with women and ensure they have time to benefit from development at a pace they can manage”.

Social norms needed to be discussed if people’s thinking was to change. This was difficult work that would take time, especially as there was a lack of expertise in gender analysis in all four countries.

Woman checks documents on bridge of a ship. Photo: Francisco Blaha.
Compliance documentation checks … very few women work in the oceanic fisheries in the WCPO. Photo: Francisco Blaha.

Opportunities in each country highlighted

Women are involved in community decision-making in places in all the countries, and this could be built on to increase their involvement.

In Vanuatu, most market vendors are women – and 90% of the members of the Silae Vanua Market Vendors Association are women. This makes a good foundation for building greater involvement in decision-making in fisheries management.

In Tonga, women make up 40% of the community councils that manage the special management areas that the government has set up to restore coastal fishing areas that have collapsed. However, SPC notes, the women on the councils may not have the same power as men when making decisions. 

In Fiji, women are involved in subsistence fishing and also work in the cannery, hold positions of power, and have extensive knowledge and skills that are different to those of Fijian men in the industry. However, SPC notes, they remain marginalised in decision-making and consultation, and receive fewer benefits. 

In Samoa, women make up about 18% of fishers in villages, and are responsible for about 10% of a community’s fishing effort. They also do most of the processing after harvest. SPC notes that although the Samoan Government is hampered by the limited sharing of skills and knowledge between departments, it is working with development partners to improve women’s involvement in coastal and marine fisheries.

The reports cover all fisheries. However, as women are much more involved in coastal fisheries and aquaculture (and men in deep-sea fisheries), the discussion is more focused on these. SPC has a handbook on gender equity and social inclusion in coastal fisheries last year.