Greenpeace today urged the fifth annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) Scientific Committee to do more to end overfishing of Pacific bigeye and yellowfin tuna, by calling for larger reductions in fishing of these species and by recommending the closure of four enclaves on international waters to all fishing.
More than half of the world’s tuna supply comes from the Pacific. 2008 was the highest reported annual catch in the Pacific fishery at over 2.4 million tonnes. Greenpeace says that the food security for local island communities and millions of people across the globe depends on this meeting recommending to the WCPFC substantial cuts in fishing and an end to the high seas plunder.
Last week Science published a joint paper by the world's leading fishery biologists declaring the dire need to restore marine ecosystems. They warn that fisheries exploitation targets "should be reinterpreted as an upper limit rather than a management target."
"Catching fish the way we do undermines the viability of the fish stocks, their ecosystem and the fishing industry itself. The WCPFC must set precautionary management targets and cut fishing by half, rather that allowing outrageous increases in fishing capacity," said Lagi Toribau Greenpeace Australia Pacific Oceans Team Leader at the meeting.
Greenpeace also says that another increasing threat to Pacific marine life results from wasteful fishing techniques - Fishing Aggregation Devices (FADs) used by purse seine vessels - which intensify overfishing. FADs are used to attract skipjack tuna but juvenile bigeye and yellowfin as well as sharks and other marine life are killed as bycatch when caught in the nets and thrown overboard, dead, as waste. Greenpeace is calling on a full ban on the use of these devices.
