Push to regulate fishing in South Pacific

Fishing industry representatives from 23 countries have been in Auckland this week trying to thrash out the details of a body to regulate activities in the South Pacific.

The South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation will be based in New Zealand if its convention is ratified by eight of the more than 20 countries which agreed to its wording last November.

Negotiations on the organisation have been running since 2005, but officials at the Fisheries Ministry believed there was momentum to bring the plan to fruition.

New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Chile, Colombia and Peru have all signed the convention, although none has formally ratified it.

The "last frontier" of the world's oceans, the South Pacific is the last major region that does not have an agreement governing high-seas fishing, despite constituting about a quarter of the world's oceans. If it is implemented, the organisation would be able to demand vessels provide data on their activities and set catch limits for fishing outside exclusive economic zones.

It will cover the seas from South America to south of Australia, excluding all exclusive economic zones.

A source of orange roughy, squid and mackerel, SPRFMO's website concedes that the understanding of the extent of commercial fishing in the South Pacific is "limited".

As well as countries which have coasts in the South Pacific, vessels from countries including Ukraine and the Faroe Islands have also fished the waters in recent years.

Jane Willing, the Fisheries Ministry's international manager, said: "As fish stocks get over-exploited in North Asia and Europe there's a lot more fishing activity happening in the southern Pacific as fleets move south."

She was confident the required number of countries would ratify the convention over the next 18 to 24 months. "It's one of the last chunks of the world's oceans that's not strictly regulated and there's an enormous amount of goodwill to get this regulated and get it working effectively."

That more than 100 delegates from around the world had turned up to this week's conference to set rules around funding, research and decision-making at the planned body showed the seriousness with which fishing countries were taking the process.

If the organisation is established, all 160 states which have signed up to the United Nations fish stocks agreement would be bound by its rules.

While the law on fishing in international waters is difficult to enforce in the courts, there are market regulations which prevent vessels that fish illegally from landing their catch in certain harbours and gaining access to some markets.

The Seafood Industry Council said New Zealand vessels caught mainly orange roughy in the high seas. However, it represented only "a very small part" of the total catch.

The organisation would ensure New Zealand had a "seat at the table" during international negotiations, the council said. "The point of the negotiation is not so much the economic value of the fishery to New Zealand as the need to reach international agreement over the way high seas fisheries are managed."

- © Fairfax NZ News