Saving Seafood

In Palau, residents are divided on easing fishing restrictions

August 26, 2024 — Palau made history a decade ago when it closed off 80% of its oceans to any kind of fishing. A proposal to open up some of its marine sanctuary to fishing has divided residents on how best to protect the oceans around the Pacific nation.

ADRIAN MA, HOST:

The tiny Pacific Island nation of Palau is facing a dilemma. See, about a decade ago, this island of just 18,000 residents became a model of ocean conservation when it completely closed its waters to foreign fishing. But since then, Palau’s economy has taken a dive, and locals are now divided over whether it’s time to open up their piece of the ocean to commercial fishing and outsiders. To explain more, NPR’s Emily Feng takes us to Palau.

EMILY FENG, BYLINE: I catch Lt. Cmdr. Mayce Ngirmeriin as he’s reading for two weeks at sea on one of Palau’s maritime patrol boats, designed to catch illegal fishing operations.

MAYCE NGIRMERIIN: Leave all the stress behind and then I go out at sea and feel free.

FENG: He helps enforce the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, enacted in 2015 that eventually closed off about 180,000 square miles from any fishing in Palau, which is near the U.S. territory of Guam. This size makes Palau’s marine sanctuary one of the largest ever. The remaining 20% is only open to Palauan fishers, and they only sell their catch locally.

Read the full transcript at NPR

Nations Promise Billions For Sustainable Oceans At Palau Conference

April 14, 2022 — Nations and philanthropic organizations pledged to redouble their efforts to conserve the world’s oceans this week at the seventh Our Ocean conference in Palau.

The conference spanned two days of speeches, panels and sessions about sustainable fisheries, Indigenous community-led conservation and other topics related to oceans.

Leaders and representatives of nonprofit groups made promises to better address climate change and related issues as advocates pressed for more urgent action.

On Wednesday in Palau, the European Union promised to back 44 ocean-related commitments worth more than $1 billion. The U.S. government announced over 100 commitments worth $2.7 billion, including 16 new sustainable fisheries initiatives worth at least $120 million and a new tool for assessing marine-protected areas.

Read the full story at Honolulu Civil Beat

 

Palau’s marine sanctuary backfires, leading to increased consumption of reef fish

March 5, 2020 — Palau’s much-touted marine sanctuary has backfired, with the fishing ban leading to an increased consumption of the reef fish in the western Pacific country – such as grouper, snapper and parrotfish – that the marine sanctuary promised to protect.

Palau introduced a new 500,000 sq km (193,000 sq mile) marine sanctuary on 1 January to much fanfare.

The establishment of the sanctuary, which is twice the size of Mexico and is the world’s sixth-largest fully protected area, saw Palau close 80% of its economic exclusion zone to commercial fishing as well as activities like drilling for oil.

While the closure of the EEZ to commercial fishing aimed to reduce pressure on the reef by encouraging sustainable domestic fishing of fish like tuna, the ban has actually led to a shortage as commercial fishing vessels have moved out of Palau’s waters.

As a result, shops and restaurants in Palau are serving up vulnerable reef fish instead of pelagic fish like tuna.

“It will be the opposite of what we wanted,” said Yimnang Golbuu, chief executive of Palau International Coral Reef Center (PICRC) and administrator of the marine sanctuary, of reports of increased consumption of reef fish. “That’s why its important to develop that constant supply [of tuna].”

Read the full story at The Guardian

Palau begins implementation of huge marine reserve

January 7, 2020 — The New Year ushered in Palau’s much-touted environmental law, creating a marine sanctuary which will close 80 percent of Palau’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to fishing and all other extractive activities such as mining, shark-finning, and transshipment – creating one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.

The marine sanctuary law, which took effect on 1 January, 2020, covers an area of about 500,000 square kilometers. The remaining 20 percent of the nation’s EEZ will be designated the domestic fishing zone (DFZ), where fishing will be allowed.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

PNA Tuna Fishing Nations Agree to Keep Vessel Day Managment Scheme

April 12, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A Pacific fisheries bloc has unanimously decided to maintain a management system that it says has increased revenue to the islands by more than 500 percent in the past six years.

The Parties to the Nauru Agreement’s Vessel Day Scheme allocates its member countries a number of days per vessel that they can allocate to distant water nations which want to purse seine fish for tuna in their waters.

It is seen as a means of increasing returns and ensuring greater sustainabiliity.

Non-island nations are advocating different approaches, including New Zealand, which this week is promoting its catch based management system to Pacific fisheries ministers.

But the PNA members agreed last week to stay with their VDS system after a review by a New Zealand based company called Toroa Strategy Ltd.

It concluded the VDS is a fully functioning fisheries management regime without peer for its class of fishery.

It said there was no clear benefit from changing to a catch scheme now or in the near future.

The New Zealand meetings are part of the Pacific Island’s Roadmap for Sustainable Pacific Fisheries but the strategy company says Pacific leaders have acted precipitately.

It said they were putting the cart before the horse by opting immediately for a catch-based system.

PNA controls waters where 50 percent of the global supply of skipjack tuna is caught.

Its members are Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau.

Tokelau is not a full member, but has joined PNA in enforcing the VDS in its fishery.

After detailing the pros and cons of both effort and quota limit systems, the independent review said there was no evidence the present sustainability performance of the VDS was inferior to the quota management system, given the nature and current state of the tuna fishery.

It said the current total catch level in PNA waters was sustainable and the management system in place works.

The company said the purse seine VDS was a very successful fisheries management regime by any real world standard.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Pacific media commits to stronger reporting of tuna stories

(March 24, 2016) –Journalists from American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have met this week as part of the 4th Pacific Media Summit hosted by the government, media partners and people of Palau.

Their two-day Fisheries Forum Agency (FFA) tunanomics Pacific media initiative regional editors dialogue on ‘Reporting the Future of Fisheries – challenges to 2020’ comes two years after the launch in February 2014 of the FFA tunanomics Pacific media initiative at the 3rd Pacific Media Summit in Noumea, New Caledonia.

The journalists expressed success stories and challenges in covering tuna stories and came up with recommendations that would make fisheries stories more attractive to readers.

One of the recommendations is “to develop and grow their understanding of tunanomics and what the economics of tuna mean to policy and decision makers, not just to news makers”.

In Palau, although offshore fishing contributes less than five percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Palau is taking a different approach by conservation and beefing up its marine surveillance capacities through its new national marine sanctuary.

Read the full story at Loop