It is impossible to overstate the significance of the oceans for Pacific Island Countries (PICs) and their people. Comprising approximately one-third of the Earth’s surface area, the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean serves as a home, sources of food, wealth, and culturally significant arenas of custodianship, kinship and familial legacy. From this perspective, the Pacific region is not a small grouping of island states dependent on larger foreign powers for prosperity. Rather, it is an area spanning over 12 million square kilometres and is the world’s largest maritime resource.
Subsistence fishing has been irrevocably intertwined with Pacific tradition and food security for thousands of years. Research by the Pacific Community in 2011 suggested that coastal populations in PICs consumed between 30–146 kilograms of fish per person annually – a broad spectrum, but even at its lower end, one that still greatly exceeded the global average fish consumption of 16–18 kilograms per person per year.
Maritime trade in the Pacific contributes heavily to the economic development of PICs. Contemporarily, tuna fishing has come to constitute an important trade enterprise for the region, with the industry hauling in approximately US$2 billion to US$3 billion annually through exports to Thailand, the European Union, Japan, and the United States. As researchers Bell, Johnson and Hobday aptly articulate, “Tuna fisheries are the wealth of small island nations in the Pacific; reef fisheries are their food.”
Sustainable management of the fisheries sector is crucially important for its longevity. In 2015, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders asserted that to capitalise on the industry’s potential to deliver significant economic returns, then sustainable, coordinated management of fisheries across the region would be vital. PIF deemed fisheries operations a key regional priority and Pacific leaders endorsed the Regional Roadmap for Sustainable Fisheries, to maximise potential economic gain, as well as to establish a taskforce that would reform longline fishing practices, oversee labour standards in fisheries, and facilitate investment and trade.
A range of policies and practices are in place to ensure the ongoing ability of tuna and other fisheries exports to generate revenue for Pacific governments, businesses and people, as well as to contribute to the region’s long-term food security. Numerous regional organisations monitor fish species and ensure fisheries’ compliance with policies, such as the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA). Since its inception in 1982, PNA has evolved into a global leader of tuna conservation and management, introducing policies to ban fishing in the high seas, control fish aggregating devices, and to prevent the bycatch of dolphins and other species. Measures like these will continue to be essential for the survival of Pacific oceans and, moreover, to affirm the Pacific’s reputation as leaders not only in the trade of marine resources, but also on the global stage, as experts in ocean conservation.
Despite gains in regional coordination and conservation, challenges to the Pacific’s fisheries industry persist. The Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) identifies that tuna fishing already operates at its “optimal yield” and claims that, “future development for our Pacific members cannot rely on increasing their catch, but instead on implementing zone-based arrangements to manage the fisheries.”
Accurate monitoring of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activity remains a key challenge in the industry. While PICs maintain sovereignty over the management of their Economic Exclusive Zones (EEZs), agencies such as FFA play a critical role in supporting PICs to collaboratively oversee the sustainable, sovereign operation of their fisheries.
Further, climate change poses serious risks to the sustainability of the industry. Rising ocean temperatures have altered the optimal breeding conditions and migratory patterns of tuna, changing the location of fishing grounds and, therefore, tuna catchability. In addition, warmer oceans are lessening the availability of dissolved oxygen levels; an impact with the potential to harm tuna physiologically, reducing their numbers overall. Acidification is also projected to influence tuna populations, as decreasing oceanic pH levels modify their growth and maturation patterns. Without urgent, decisive action from the entire international community, climate change will have wide-ranging, devastating impacts on the economies, geographies, and livelihoods of PICs.
While Pacific fisheries confront a range of challenges, they are also inextricably presented with a wealth of opportunities. As Epeli Hau’ofa identifies in his watershed essay, ‘Our Sea of Islands’, “There are no more suitable people on earth to be guardians of the world’s largest ocean than those for whom it has been home for generations.” Local Pacific fisheries businesses, such as SolTuna, Pafco and Pacific Sunrise Fishing are testament to the opportunities that abound for locally run fisheries businesses with Pacific priorities at the fore.
As an industry, Pacific fisheries is a reminder that the Blue Pacific is not small – it is an oceanic expanse that has been cared for by its people since time immemorial, and remains an arena in which Pacific populations can showcase expertise in ocean resource management, business and sustainability.
