Industry: license cut-back won't help tuna population in Fiji

Transcript

A Fijian tuna fishing group says a reduction in fishing licenses will do nothing to regenerate the tuna population in the South Pacific.

The Ministry of Fisheries and Forest in Fiji has pulled back the number of licenses for vessels in Fijian waters from 70, to 60 for the year.

The owner of the Fiji Fish Marketing Group owner, Graham Southwick, told Christopher Gilbert fishing may need to stop altogether for at least five years to restore the tuna.

GRAHAM SOUTHWICK: It wouldn't matter if they put 120 licenses or they put 10. The industry is so shattered at the moment. A reduction of five or 10 licenses will have absolutely no impact on the situation now, it's far too late. It's gesture that will have no affect seeing that catches are down 90 percent and there's just gross overfishing going on all over the place. If they reduced the numbers down to just five boats it would not make any difference to the current fleet now, too late.

CHRISTOPHER GILBERTt: Why is it too late?

GS: Because the entire pacific fleet is tied up and the cause of that tying up is the gross overfishing that's going not within the Fiji zone, but all around the regional zone. So, the catch rate has fallen to where most boats operating at about 1/3 will break even, and the causes of that, which is the Asian fleet, the subsidised fleets, are not going away. In fact they're increasing their fleet. Even if they all stopped and went home today, which they won't, it would be at least a five year period of recovery. In which case all current companies would have to stop operating for five years. Cutting back the licenses from 70 to 60 in the context of what's going on all over the place is totally irrelevant.

CG: Does their need to be a total cut back on fishing in the entire area?

GS: There needs to be a total cutback. It needs to be a major cutback, probably a minimum of 60% of the boats fishing in the south-west Pacific need to stop. There needs to be a five year recovery period. No company is going to survive the five year recovery period. Any sort of remedy that they embark upon now is probably a 20 year plan. It's not going to help anybody that's currently in the business.

CG: When we talk about these license cutbacks, are we talking about licenses across the board, or just for local companies, or international companies?

GS: Fiji can only control the licenses within their own zone. But, other pacific island countries have been part of the problem. Because they have not had a fleet of their own they've just issued excessive licenses and just taken license fees and issued as many licenses pretty well as people wanted, with no regard to the resource or the sustainability of the operation because it doesn't affect them. Other regional countries have issued licenses non-stop just to make some revenue and the collapse of a fishery has no affect on them except that of course that those license fees are all paid by the foreign fleets, and subsidised by the government, so they continue to pay anyway.