Tuna companies press gov’t to negotiate more pacts for additional fishing grounds

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — The tuna industry is asking the national government to work out bilateral fishing access agreements with other tuna-rich countries since the closure of portions of the Pacific Ocean for six months now has slowed down their production.

Bayani B. Fredeluces, executive director of the Socsargen Federation of Fishing and Allied Industries, said the ban imposed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) which the government has supported and is enforcing has taken a toll on the operations of tuna fishing companies, although he declined to give specific data.

“The government, through the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, should make concrete moves now to help our purse seine operators in the wake of the ban [that will last for two years],” Mr. Fredeluces said in an interview last week.

He said the local fishing federation suggests that the national government hammers out fishing access agreements with countries like Palau and other Pacific island nations to allow the local purse seine operators to fish in their waters.

Local fishing companies are allowed to fish in the waters off Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, provided they have onshore investments there, as in the case of the homegrown conglomerate RD Corp. of tuna tycoon Rodrigo E. Rivera, Sr.

WCPFC approved the closure in December 2008 in Busan, South Korea, in a document, titled “Conservation and Management Measure for Bigeye and Yellowfin Tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.”

The closure for purse seine fishing covers only two pockets, or areas, of the high seas in the western and eastern parts of the Pacific Ocean. It took effect last Jan. 1.

Pocket 1 covers Palau, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, which Mr. Fredeluces noted are the areas closest to the Philippines and where local tuna fishers frequently operate.

Pocket 2 is bounded by the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tuvalu, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and parts of Kiribati.

Not covered by the ban are the high seas surrounding Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and parts of Kiribati.

Earlier, Mr. Fredeluces said that an initial study by the local fishing federation projected that tuna catch from purse seine fishing to drop 10%-20% as a result of the closure.

Despite the slowing down of local purse seine operators due to the ban, Mr. Fredeluces said tuna canneries in the city are managing since the slack is balanced by foreign-caught stocks.

A study by the University of the Philippines-Visayas’ College of Fisheries and Ocean Science said there’s a need for the local tuna industry to look for alternative areas. One area consists of still-untested areas of the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone (EEZ), although these waters may not be as lucrative as the closed fishing areas in the Pacific Ocean, it said. The study stressed that bilateral agreements with more Pacific island-states will allow Philippine purse seiners to fish within the EEZ of these nations.

The regional office of the Department of Labor and Employment has estimated that the Pacific ban will directly affect 1,600 workers of at least eight local fishing companies. — R. S. Sarmiento, Businessworld