Fishing ministers from the countries making up the Parties to the Nauru Agreement have announced additional moves to ensure the sustainable management of tuna species in their central Pacific region.
The PNA members, Tuvalu, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands, have been meeting in Tuvalu.
Don Wiseman reports:
"The ministers want a better return on the fish caught than the five percent they currently get. They also want a minimum of ten percent of crew on purse seiners to be Pacific Islanders and for a PNA Crewing Agency established at Tarawa in Kiribati. To cut by catch they want an extension to a current ban on fish aggregating devices and for a net mesh of no smaller than 90 millimetres. The ministers have also decreed that the purse seiner vessel day scheme extended to longline vessels. And they want access and control of all the online data on activity in the fishery."
