The executive director of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission says last week's meeting should have made tougher decisions to combat overfishing.
The annual tuna commission meeting has been labelled a failure for its inability to agree to tuna fishing cutbacks demanded by 17 Pacific island countries.
Delegates agreed to reduce longline bigeye catch by up to 30 percent for foreign fishing nations, freeze the number of large foreign purse seine and longline vessels targeting bigeye tuna, ban the fishing of silky sharks and limit the use of fish aggregating devices.
The head of the tuna commission, Glen Hurry, says the decisions do not go far enough and do not reflect well on the commission, whose members provide about 60 percent of the world's tuna.
"I was disappointed in the outcome of this because I thought that they should've taken some harder action and over a longer period of time to make sure that we begin to control the overcatching of bigeye tuna. And I am concerned and I think that a number of members around the table are concerned about this as well."
Glen Hurry says the Tuna Commission will be reviewing the measures over the next few weeks and will start a process to ensure that better results are reached at next year's meeting.
