Contact: Joanna Benn, 202.247.5823 OR Dave Bard, 202.778.4551

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) oversees the world's largest tuna fishery. At its next meeting, it must decide on conservation measures for tuna and sharks, which would affect all those who fish for them in the WCPFC's vast convention area.

Meet Pew experts ahead of this March's WCPFC Meeting in Guam, U.S.  - March 25 - 30.

Learn more about WCPFC:

• Important WCPFC Facts
• Tropical Tuna in Focus
• Sharks in Focus
• IUU Fishing in Focus
• Pew's Recomendations for the 2012 WCPFC
• Additional Resources

• The WCPFC is the newest and largest of the tuna regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs).
• It is responsible for fishing in an area that covers almost 20 percent of the Earth's surface.
• A large proportion of the tuna in the Pacific comes from the territorial waters of Small Island Developing States. These are developing countries with small landmasses but huge areas of ocean where they have sovereign rights over the exploitation and conservation of marine life; except for their marine resources they have few additional national income streams.
• WCPFC member governments have committed to valuing the unique social, economic, and geographic characteristics of the region. However, there are challenges in balancing the aspirations of developing coastal States with the historical and current fishing by distant-water fleets from the United States, European Union, Japan, Republic of South Korea, and Taiwan (which RFMOs called Chinese Taipei).
• The 25 members of the WCPFC will gather in Guam from 26th-30th March for the commission's eighth annual meeting to discuss ways to conserve tropical tuna and to consider measures to protect threatened shark species. This includes a proposed ban on setting nets around whale sharks to catch the tuna that gather beneath them, a practice that frequently maims or kills the shark.
• Members will also look at ways to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Tropical Tuna

More than half of the world's tuna catch comes from waters managed by the WCPFC.

According to the scientific body that advises WCPFC members, bigeye tuna are already experiencing overfishing, yellowfin are fished to the limits of sustainability, and skipjack are within sight of this limit. Further, a growing number of vessels are fishing in the region, despite fewer available tuna.

Discussion at the upcoming meeting will focus on updating specific conservation policies for the management of bigeye and yellowfin tuna.

The use of fish aggregating devices (FADs)—a further threat to tropical tuna—will also be discussed. FADs are floating fishing gear used increasingly by the tuna fishery to locate schools of fish.

Purse-seine fleets set nets around these artificial devices to catch the schools of tuna that (along with other species) gather beneath the FAD. Use of these devices has been shown to have negative ecological impacts, contributing to the catching of sharks and contributing to the overfishing of juvenile bigeye.

What happened at WCPFC in 2010?

• Member governments adopted a set of conservation policies in 2008, among other measures, for bigeye and yellowfin tuna, setting a seasonal closure on FAD fishing. In 2010, members discussed the shortcomings of these steps to better manage tropical tuna but held off on making decision until this year's meeting.

Sharks

Fishermen using nets and longlines catch sharks deliberately or inadvertently, in WCPFC fisheries as in many others around the world. Increasing demand and high prices for shark fins in Asia mean that fishermen often have little incentive to release the animals alive.

WCPFC has not taken meaningful action on sharks, even though it has a clear mandate to protect shark species within its jurisdiction.

What happened at WCPFC in 2010?

• Last year, few discussions were held on sharks. WCPFC members failed to adopt a measure to ban intentionally setting nets on whale sharks.

IUU Fishing

About one-fifth of fish taken from the ocean are estimated to be unreported, caught illegally, or taken from areas with no regulatory management; all these cases fall within the parameters of IUU fishing.

A study estimated the economic loss from IUU fishing in the western and central Pacific Ocean region to be 21 to 46 percent of the reported catch, which is valued at up to US$1.5 billion a year.¹

Until IUU fishing is stopped, WCPFC's ability to manage and monitor fisheries in the region will continue to be undermined. Some States allow their ports to be used by illegal operators, sometimes unwittingly. Others, either on their own or in cooperation with like-minded States, have begun to restrict port access as a means of controlling IUU fishing.

What happened at WCPFC in 2010?

• Discussions were held about what was needed to control IUU-caught fish entering ports, but countries did not take action. This year, members must move from discussion to taking specific steps to combat IUU fishing by adopting measures to regulate whether certain vessels are allowed into port and what happens to them when they are there. These measures should include helping developing States build the capacity needed to take enforcement action in their ports.

Pew's 2012 Recommendations to WCPFC

Read Pew's WCPFC Policy Statement (PDF)

At the eight WCPFC Annual Meeting, the Pew Environment Group will call on WCPFC members to:

1. End Overfishing and Implement the Precautionary Principle with New Conservation Measures for Tropical Tuna
   - Adopt a new comprehensive and effective Conservation and Management Measure (CMM) for tropical tuna (CMM 2011-01).
   - Adopt a CMM on fish aggregating devices to manage their use and provide scientists with data.
   - Establish target and limit reference points for tropical tuna.
   - Strengthen the compliance regime for CMMs.
2. Adopt Conservation Measures to Protect Sharks
   - Prohibit the retention, landing, and trade of oceanic whitetip sharks and establish concrete, precautionary catch limits for North Pacific blue sharks.
   - Mandate gear modifications, such as the compulsory use of single monofilament nylon traces to reduce shark bycatch.
   - Prohibit purse-seine vessels from intentionally setting nets around whale sharks.
   - Prohibit the removal of shark fins at sea to improve enforcement of the shark finning ban.
3. Strengthen Controls to Stop IUU Fishing
   - Improve port State measures (PSMs) to deter IUU fishing, and agree on specific steps to assist developing States in effectively implementing PSMs.
   - Require unique vessel identifiers for all vessels larger than 100 gross tonnes or longer than 24 metres operating in the WCPFC convention area.