PNA head says members must protect value of fishery

Transcript

The head of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement says member countries are hiking fishing fees as a way to protect the increasing value of its fishery.

From next year, the fishing day fee for foreign fishing vessels will rise from 6000 to a minimum of 8000 US dollars per boat.

After two days of meetings in the Marshall Islands, the PNA nations also issued a strongly-worded communiqué putting the US industry on notice that the $63 million it has agreed to pay annually to fish in the region isn't enough.

The chief executive of the PNA, Dr Transform Aqorau, says if foreign companies want to fish in Pacific waters they must pay what is asked of them.

He spoke to Amelia Langford about the reasons behind the PNA's decision.

TRANSFORM AQORAU: They have decided to raise the minimum benchmark that they would charge foreign fishing vessels for a day from 6,000 US dollars a day, to 8,000 US dollars a day. From 2015 onwards. So this applies to foreign fishing vessels that fish under the vessel day scheme which is the main arrangement under which all the purse seiners, these are the large fishing boats that use nets to catch their fish, the fish in the PNA waters, they'll be paying 8,000 dollars from next year, as a minimum benchmark fee.

AMELIA LANGFORD: So are you anticipating any negative reaction by putting these day fees up?

TA: Yeah you can anticipate that the industry will be, but I haven't actually heard of the industry or actually received any from any of the industry representatives about the value of the days. And really, it's just you know at the end of the day, if they want to fish in the waters, they'll have to pay the fees being asked of them.

AL: And is this mainly for conservation reasons, or revenue? What is the reasoning behind it?

TA: It's both, I think we are approaching the true value of this fishing. Remember it's the fisheries going up in value in terms of the overall value of this fisheries continues to increase. And you know, as resource owners, we'd like to be able to get a fair share of the value of the fisheries. It's ours and I don't see any reason why we should be getting the poor end of the deal. I think it's not an unreasonable demand of resource owners to be saying to those who come in and fish, hey look this is our resource, we recognise it's a valuable resource, and the people of the Pacific should be getting a bigger share of the value of that resource. At this point in time, we're only getting about 10 percent. So yeah, the value of the days has gone up but relative to the value of the fishery it's still only around 10 percent of the value of the fishery. So we're not quite there yet in terms of how much Pacific Islanders are getting in return. There is an increase in the revenue that we're getting from the resource but the major beneficiaries from our resource continues to be those that are catching the fish and processing it. So all we'd like to, we'd like to be able to get a better share.

AL: Yes, I mean, some people might say it could go even higher.

TA: Absolutely. I think this is just the minimum. There are both that are fishing in the fishery that can afford to pay more than 10,000 dollars a day. But you know, we're working on averages.