Managing Bigeye Tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean

Valerie Post,Dale Squires

doi:10.3389/fmars.2020.00619

Abstract

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) is responsible for managing highly migratory species in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO), and has been interested in managing bigeye tuna as stock assessments prior to 2017 indicated that the stock was experiencing overfishing. This paper provides some background on the primary fisheries catching bigeye tuna in the WCPO, describes the various policies within the conservation and management measures adopted by the WCPFC, discusses the effectiveness of such policies, and concludes with some suggestions for future policies for consideration.

Highlights

The Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) contains the largest tuna fisheries in the world, with catches in 2018 contributing to 55% of global tuna catch (Williams and Reid, 2019)
The purpose of the paper is to provide relevant background on bigeye tuna and the longline and purse seine fisheries responsible for significant bigeye tuna extraction in the WCPO, describe the various conservation and management measures (CMMs) adopted by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), evaluate the effectiveness of the various CMMs, and provide some recommendations for future consideration
The Commission has adopted a number of CMMs to work toward the different objectives over time, and these have resulted in mainly “commandand-control” type policies for the purse seine and longline fisheries

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) contains the largest tuna fisheries in the world, with catches in 2018 contributing to 55% of global tuna catch (Williams and Reid, 2019). The WCPFC has since its inception grappled with reducing fishing mortality for bigeye tuna, and adopted many CMMs aimed at managing and conserving this species of tuna. Since the 2017 stock assessment, the management focus in the WCPFC for bigeye tuna has shifted from reducing overfishing to maintaining average spawning biomass at 2012–2015 levels. The purpose of the paper is to provide relevant background on bigeye tuna and the longline and purse seine fisheries responsible for significant bigeye tuna extraction in the WCPO, describe the various CMMs adopted by the WCPFC, evaluate the effectiveness of the various CMMs, and provide some recommendations for future consideration. We further recognize that bycatch policies may contain implicit or explicit allocation among CCMs, which may be highly contentious

BACKGROUND

Findings

CONCLUSION