Pacific fisheries authorities to enforce mandatory guidelines

Transcript

Fisheries authorities in the Pacific are planning to enforce mandatory guidelines to ensure the safety of fisheries observers.

The guidelines are the outcome of a meeting for Pacific regional observer coordinators at the Forum Fisheries Agency in the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara, last week.

The chair of the observer coordinators, Monty Depaune, who is the manager of Nauru's Fisheries and Marine Resources Authority, says fishing companies stand to lose their accreditation if they don't ensure observers' security.

He says the new guidelines include providing observers with two-way communicators and safety beacons when they board vessels.

Mr Depaune tells Don Wiseman how they will work.  

MONTY DEPAUNE: With the help of regional organisations like the FFA, SPC, as well as sub-regional ones like the PNA, we have standardised forms that we look at. So these forms identify individuals as well as vessels that repeatedly offend. These are ones that we call vessels or people of interest and we try and keep a tab on that and see how well or how badly they are performing, and take this to the flag states for further action.

DON WISEMAN: So in terms of maltreatment of observers have you to this point been able to take, or had the offending countries, take action?

MD: Yes, there have been some cases that we know of where action has been taken but it is not easy given you only have the one observer on the boat and it is like his or her word against the rest.

DW: Is that indicating really that there a need to have more than one observer?

MD: Possibly, but I am sure there are other ways such as what is being proposed by the Tuna Commission and this is something that is going to be mandatory from 2017 - that is for each national observer programme to have an emergency action plan in place, as well as giving certainty to our observers, such as two way communicators as well as safety beacons.

DW: Is there any correlation between the maltreatment of observers and nefarious activities got up to by the offending boat?

MD: I am not entirely sure whether there is a correlation like that but certainly there is a correlation where we have received negative responses from vessels about our observers but the observer has come up with numerous accounts of compliance issues conducted by vessels while fishing.

DW: In terms of these protocols that you have developed do you know that you got support from the shipping companies themselves at this point?

MD: No, I don't know whether we have got their support, but I don't think these protocols will be putting them out in anyway. We are just tightening up some loose ends where we are increasing our monitoring of our observers in terms of their security and welfare. So for the boats I think this more about developing an understanding with them, or the operator anyway, so that they understand their obligations to our observers, and what our observers are obligated to do.