Papua New Guinea Archives - Saving Seafood

PNG FIA, UNIDO partnering with GSSI in 2021

February 25, 2021 — The Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI) has seen its ranks grow in 2021, with the Papua New Guinea Fishing Industry Association (PNG FIA) recently coming aboard as a funding partner and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) joining as an affiliated partner.

PNG FIA, which provides “a united voice for the fishing and associated industries in Papua New Guinea,” has been forging stakeholder partnerships on the basis of sustainability for years, according to FIA Director of Sustainability Marcelo Hidalgo.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishing Industry Association (PNG) Joins GSSI

February 23, 2021 — The following was released by the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative:

The Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative is pleased to announce Fishing Industry Association – Papua New Guinea has joined GSSI as a Funding Partner.

Fishing Industry Association (PNG) provides a united voice for the fishing and associated industries in Papua New Guinea, and facilitates and encourages their promotion in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere.

“The partnership with GSSI is a milestone for us to improve and increase our commitment to the conservation of the ocean ecosystem as well as protect people working in the fishery with holistic approach included in the FIA (PNG) Responsible Sourcing Policy which includes the Marine Litter and Fishing Gear (Ghost) Management Practices and Labour Onboard Improvement (crew welfare, improving working conditions of the crew on board fishing vessels). This partnership is also a great opportunity to collaborate with global stakeholders to ensure sustainability, transparency and traceability in the seafood supply chain”, said Sylvester Pokajam, President/Chairman, Fishing Industry Association (PNG).

Read the full release here

Deep-sea mining: An environmental solution or impending catastrophe?

June 17, 2020 — In 2007, a submersible with a large drill descended 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) into the sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG), landing near a network of hydrothermal vents that host an array of rare and unique sea life. The machine operators, working for Canadian mining company Nautilus Minerals, Inc., began drilling into the seabed, searching for copper, gold, zinc and silver. In the years that followed, the company drilled again and again.

By 2019, Nautilus, the first company to ever receive a deep-sea mining license, had gone bankrupt before extracting any minerals, and the PNG government, which had invested in the project, was left with millions of dollars in debt.

The marine environment didn’t fare much better. Jonathan Mesulam, a resident of New Ireland province in PNG, located near a Nautilus project site, said his community experienced “serious impacts” when the company began exploring the seabed.

“We were worried because the mining is experimental, there are no examples anywhere in the world, and Papua New Guinea has no regulatory framework,” Mesulam said in a presentation he gave at a MiningWatch Canada conference in 2019. “Also, we knew that there is an active undersea volcano at that site, could it cause a tsunami?

Read the full story at Mongabay

Sixth Pacific Islands Fisheries Observer Missing At Sea

July 3, 2017 — Another Papua New Guinea fisheries observer has gone missing at sea.

He has been named as James Junior Numbaru, a certified Pacific Islands Regional Fisheries Observer in his 20’s with six years of observer experience. This brings to six the number of Pacific observers missing at sea while four in Papua New Guinea alone.

A statement issued yesterday by the PNG Fisheries Forum Agency (FFA) states Mr Numbaru was reported missing by the Chinese flagged, PNG-chartered purse seiner FENG XIANG 818 on Monday 26 June.

Attempts to get comments from the National Fisheries Authority (NFA) and the Minister for Fisheries Mao Zeming were unsuccessful.

Read the full story at Pacific Islands Report

Warmer Global Ocean Pushes Fish to Extremes

August 15, 2016 — The opening lyrics in Bob Dylan’s classic tune “The Times They Are A-Changin’” told us to acknowledge that the waters around us were quickly rising. And while Dylan was surely referring to the sociopolitical climate of the day, those words still ring true in the physical sense as well. Climate change and global warming — or whatever phrase you use for our planet’s current ecological ailments — have generated much debate for the last several decades. These topics just seem to make some people, well, hot and bothered. Some choose to reject the notion that we’re seeing fairly, if not very, rapid changes in climate, but unfortunately, the data say otherwise. And this phenomenon we’re witnessing is directly linked to, if not driven by, what’s going on in the earth’s oceans.

In reality, the world’s oceans comprise a single large, connected entity called the global ocean. This expansive mass of water churns with currents, both visible and hidden, that not only exert control over marine ecosystems but also create profound effects on terrestrial ones.

The Long Term

Most anglers have heard plenty of talk over the last year or so about the record-breaking water temperatures in the Pacific, brought on by the last El Niño. Indeed, last year’s event ranked as the most significant ever recorded. No matter how severe the episode, however, El Niño events typically linger only a year or so. And although these ephemeral conditions seem to garner a lot of press, bigger problems have been unfolding for some time. Many environmental scientists agree that ocean temperatures are rising on a long-term, global level.

Read the full story at Sport Fishing Magazine

AP Explore: Seafood from slaves

April 21, 2016 — Over the course of 18 months, Associated Press journalists located men held in cages, tracked ships and stalked refrigerated trucks to expose the abusive practices of the fishing industry in Southeast Asia. The reporters’ dogged effort led to the release of more than 2,000 slaves and traced the seafood they caught to supermarkets and pet food providers across the U.S. For this investigation, AP has won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Read the articles at the Associated Press

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

AP investigation tracked to Papua New Guinea; 8 enslaved fishermen rescued so far

July 31, 2015 — Authorities in Papua New Guinea have rescued eight fishermen held on board a Thai-owned refrigerated cargo ship, and dozens of other boats are still being sought in response to an Associated Press report that included satellite photos and locations of slave vessels at sea.

Two Burmese and six Cambodian men have been removed from the Blissful Reefer, a massive quarter-acre transport ship now impounded in Daru, Papua New Guinea, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) north of Australia. Officials said the fishermen appeared to be part of a larger group of forced laborers being transported from Thailand to be distributed onto various fishing boats, said George Gigauri, head of the International Organization for Migration in Port Moresby, which has assisted with the operation. He added that nearly 20 other crewmembers from the Blissful Reefer have not yet been questioned, and that if victims of trafficking are found, “there are lives at risk.”

The men are part of a seemingly inexhaustible supply of poor migrants from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos who are forced to fish for the Thai seafood industry. When workers run away, become sick or even die, they are easily replaced by new recruits who are tricked or coerced by false promises of jobs in Thailand.

The story of Aung San Win, 19, who was among the rescued men, started the same way as with hundreds of other enslaved fishermen interviewed in person or in writing by AP during a year-long investigation into slavery at sea. He said a broker came to his home in Myanmar and convinced him and several other young men to go to Thailand where they could find good work in factories. But when they arrived, their passports and identification cards were taken. They were then pushed onto boats and told they would have to fish for three years and owed nearly $600 for their documents, he said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News and World Report

AP Tracks Slave Boats to Papua New Guinea

July 27, 2015 — From space, the fishing boats are just little white specks floating in a vast stretch of blue water off Papua New Guinea. But zoom in and there’s the critical evidence: Two trawlers loading slave-caught seafood onto a massive refrigerated cargo ship.

The trawlers fled a slave island in Indonesia with captives of a brutal Southeast Asian trafficking ring whose catch reaches the United States. Hundreds of men were freed after they were discovered there earlier this year, but 34 boats loaded with workers left for new fishing grounds before help arrived — they remain missing.

After a four-month investigation, The Associated Press has found that at least some of them ended up in a narrow, dangerous strait nearly 1,000 miles away. The proof comes from accounts from recently returned slaves, satellite beacon tracking, government records, interviews with business insiders and fishing licenses. The location is also confirmed in images from space taken by one of the world’s highest resolution satellite cameras, upon the AP’s request.

The skippers have changed their ships’ names and flags to evade authorities, but hiding is easy in the world’s broad oceans. Traffickers operate with impunity across boundaries as fluid as the waters. Laws are few and hardly enforced. And depleted fish stocks have pushed boats farther out into seas that are seldom even glimpsed, let alone governed.

This lack of regulation means that even with the men located, bringing them to safety may prove elusive.

Officials from Papua New Guinea working with the International Organization for Migration said they were not aware of human trafficking cases in the area but are investigating. Numerous other agencies — including Interpol, the United Nations and the U.S. State and Defense departments — told the AP they don’t have the authority to get involved.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Times