PNA members urged to prepare for risks

Transcript

The Parties to the Nauru Agreement's chief executive is urging members to plan for tuna revenue declines.

Due to the success of its vessel day scheme, the eight PNA member states have seen revenue increase five times since 2010 to an estimated US $350 million this year.

Transform Aqorau says Pacific states can't be complacent about the current surge in fisheries revenue.

He told Johnny Blades it's time to consider the risks.

TANSFORM AQORAU: The unknown risks are what I term as environmental factors, there might be just one bad year because of some environmental conditions that might affect the abundance and therefore affect the fishery. Then the result of that is it affects the revenue that we have been getting. Sustainability is important and the risk that we bring out to the health of the stock that is important. And then there is the other risks that we now off and these are external risks, the ones that we can see and that's the market prices that we have seen. You know oversupply in the markets can also lead to reduced fish prices which have other consequences. Reduced profitability for boats etc. So we need to be working amongst ourselves and be aware of where those risks are coming from and be prepared.

JOHNNY BLADES: The vessel day scheme has been a success but do you imagine it can be improved or do you think there can be changes in the pipeline?

TA: The improvements that I see for ourselves is improving things in terms of compliance, some of the operational things amongst the parties themselves. That is what we are working on this year. We have just had a very successful review of the  VDS which told us that there is nothing really wrong with the vessel day scheme in fact it was described as the most complex management and the largest management arrangement in the world.

JB: Is complex good though?

TA: Well complex being that it involves eight countries in whose waters the fisheries takes place or nine including Tokelau. But you have vessels from Japan from Korea from Taiwan from the United States from the European Union from the Philippines and so that complexity relates to the actors who are involved in it. The largest in terms of the geographic area of the fisheries.

JB: The creation of the PNA has that kind of seen a whole new level in terms of what they can do in terms of the monitoring and so forth?

TA: For the observation we have the observer program, as a, I mean all the purse seiners have to have an observer on board as part of the VDS we have developed a Fisheries Information Management System called the FIMS. We have a fairly robust and quite an effective, in my view information management system in which we are to continue to improve by having, moving towards electronic reporting. Moving towards port to port electronic reporting and the development of the use of tablets by observers to send almost near realtime information back to their home parties. So the level of information that we are getting are much much better.