Pacific fishing vessel observers playing vital role

Transcript

The man who oversees the work of fishing vessel observers in the Pacific says a greater sense of professionalism is being imparted on those tasked with monitoring catches.

Peter Sharples, the Observer Support and Development Coordinator with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, says because of the threats posed by overfishing there's a growing need for countries to better monitor and manage their fishing grounds.

He told Johnny Blades observers are the guys at the front-line.

PETER SHARPLES: They're independent, and we place a great deal of emphasis on the use of independent observers, whose job it is to go on fishing boats, collect information that's used for science, but it's also used for compliance and management. We call them the eyes and ears of fisheries management in the fishing grounds. For the purse seine fishing boats, which are the largest boats out there, they're catching sometimes up to a couple of hundred tonnes in a single set, but usually 30 to 50 tonnes a shot, there's one observer on every one of those boats. For the longline fishing fleet, which are much smaller boats, perhaps up to 3,000 of them in the region, we've got a target coverage level of about 5 percent, so one observer on every 20 boats.

JOHNNY BLADES: How vulnerable are these observers, you know, as a lone kind of agent on a boat with foreigners who might have all sorts of ways of influencing their job?

PS: Observers are not the best paid people, it would be nice to see them being better paid. So I'd think that the question about vulnerability is an important question, we have to be on the lookout. And we try to impart a sense of professionalism in trying to get the fisheries managers in the different countries in which we work to understand it. That these guys that are employed to get out there, they've got to treat them as professionals and hopefully that will reflect on them working as professionals. But there is always concern that some of the data those observers collect is valuable, that fisheries, boats, may want to see it presented differently. And for me this is one of the biggest tractions of electronic recording. I love the idea of having a time stamp and a position stamp for every piece of data that goes into, is collected because it gives us all an opportunity to go back and say, is this observer doing the job that he is supposed to be doing. But generally, I've worked with, trained a lot of these observers, and I think the majority of our people out there are doing a good job, an honest job, are keen, and they just need the support.

JB: How do they end up being observers? Are they selected by the administrators and the high-up people back home, or they just come in because they're keen for a job?

PS: Initially when the job of an observer started, it was kind of a perk job for people who already work in fisheries. But it had a model there, and 20 percent of the US purse seine fishing boats fishing in the region had to have a observer on board. So systems were developed from them. But at that time, it was very much, here's a good job for somebody that works in fisheries already, we'll give them a couple of weeks training, he can go out and work as an observer, he gets a nice trip overseas every now and then. That's in the days when we had, just maybe, at any one time 10 or 12 observers out in the region. Nowadays, we have over 700 observers through the region and we have 100 percent coverage of the purse seine vessels that used to be 20 percent coverage. So we need a lot more people. And what we found initially when we started off is we ran out of the fisheries people, and then we had a lot of people being presented for training who just weren't up to the job. They were guys, nephews and nieces of politicians, here's an opportunity to get a job. So we've since tried to incorporate pre-selection systems and streams. We're certainly raising the profile of the job, we've created the training and certification standards, we're trying to bring in a sense of professionalism. We have to do a lot of training of observers. They come from a background that aren't used to having a bit of extra money in their pockets, and that's a big concern when observers hit port. So we put a lot of effort into training as a unit, and training that's all about etiquette, and includes drinking with officers. We are certainly working hard to get that message across. Alcohol has been a problem with observers in the past.