Central Pacific Tuna Fisheries Research Articles

Increasing industry involvement in international tuna fishery negotiations

<h2>Summary</h2> The private sector can play a prominent role in global ocean governance. Yet, industry stakeholders are diverse, and how specific companies engage with policymakers remains poorly understood. Here, we focus on Western and Central Pacific tuna fisheries, which provide ∼60% of global tuna catch and a critical source of income for developing island states. We identified relationships between companies and governments in international fishery negotiations from 2005 to 2018. Relative industry attendance nearly doubled during this time, and 15 of 158 companies have dominated corporate representation since 2014. Further, industry members outnumbered government policymakers on half of the ten largest delegations, and 70% of island state delegations included foreign companies. Meeting attendees corroborated the influence of industry stakeholders, but this differed across countries. During our study period, management of tuna fisheries improved overall, suggesting that company involvement does not hinder sustainability outcomes and could play a supportive role when agendas are aligned.

Assessing ocean temperature’s role in fishery production

Ocean temperatures are increasing. Little work has been done to examine the effects that these changes will have on fishery production. The study at hand seeks to incorporate the influence of climate change into an established static bioeconomic fishery model. Stock biomass is approximated to be a function of sea surface temperature. Following a feasible generalized least squares regression using data from the Western and Central Pacific, the interaction between fishery effort and temperature is found to be statistically significant. From this model, various functional forms relating effort, catch, profit, and temperature are specified. In particular, a function that returns an effort requirement given a target catch level and temperature forecast is generated.The importance of these tools for fishery management is explored through application to Western and Central Pacific tuna fisheries. Recommendations for extensions into future research are made and the foundation for a model of efficient effort allocation across time and the entirety of a management area, given changing temperatures, is specified. The study has succeeded in establishing the statistically significant role that temperature plays in the fishery production function.

Fishing access agreements and harvesting decisions of host and distant water fishing nations

The declaration of exclusive economic zones (EEZs) granted coastal states sovereign rights over the marine resources in their EEZs and enabled developing coastal states to legally charge access fees to distant water fishing (DWF) nations for access to the resources in these waters. Despite the potential for economic gains, however, the ability of coastal states to benefit from the granting of sovereign rights and to ensure the sustainable use of their fisheries resources depends on how domestic fishing effort responds to the harvesting decisions of the DWF nations. We develop a stylized bioeconomic model to explore the change in fishing behavior of host and DWF nations when the two nations enter into an access agreement with varying levels of access fee. We further conduct an econometric analysis of changes in Pacific island nations’ harvesting behavior in response to the harvest decisions of DWF nations using data from the Western and Central Pacific tuna fishery. Our model results show that there is a range of variable access payment levels over which the host nation substitutes benefits from its domestic fishing activity with access payments from the DWF nation and that setting fees in this range can create a trap whereby host nations are forced to trade-off receiving a fair return to their fishery resources through access fees and retaining their own active fleet capacity. Our empirical analysis further shows a gradual shift in the way in which Pacific island host nations responded to the harvest decision of DWF nations as a result of the creation of the 200-nautical-mile EEZ.

Subsidies, public goods, and external benefits in fisheries

The fisheries subsidy discussion has largely overlooked the increased welfare for society from Pigouvian subsidies that increase the supply of and investment in public goods when there are external benefits and free riding. Important fisheries public goods and external benefits include knowledge associated with new technology for “target” species and “bycatch” reduction, research and development for new technology, and ecosystem services and biodiversity. Careful definition of subsidies also requires consideration of the counter-factual or what would have happened without the action to which the fishery “subsidy” is attributed. Subsidies in the Western and Central Pacific tuna fishery are evaluated according to these and other criteria.

BMEY as a fisheries management target

AbstractThis paper evaluates the implications of managing fisheries to achieve a BMEY target, or a biomass level that maximizes net economic returns in the fishery, and discusses the role of private ownership and the trade‐offs between economic and conservation benefits in this setting. The paper shows how a BMEY target can be used to: (i) determine relative employment and profitability measures; (ii) account for both the harvesting and processing sectors; and (iii) incorporate the interests of consumers and producers of fish. The profits–employment trade‐off of adopting a BMEY target vs. a traditional BMSY target is calculated using a model and data from the Western and Central Pacific tuna fisheries (WCPTF), while a generic bioeconomic model is constructed to show numerical values of BMEY from including processing and/or retail sectors and the consumer benefits of harvesting fish. For the WCPTF, results show that the long‐term gains per job lost from pursuing a BMEY target are worth several times the value of the average GDP per capita of Pacific Island Countries. The generic bioeconomic model shows that including a processing and/or retail sector, as well as measures of consumer benefit, lowers the BMEY target. However, there remains a broad range of parameter values for which BMEY is still greater than biomass at maximum sustainable yield, or BMSY. The paper also illustrates cases where BMEY &gt; BMSY at different values of the price elasticity of demand, margins for processing and/or retail sectors and values of the discount rate.

Rent-Maximization Versus Competition in the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Fishery

AbstractThe potential for achieving sustainable and efficient harvesting of three species of migratory tuna in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean is examined. The stocks reside in exclusive economic zones (mainly those of Pacific island countries) and in the high seas. Most harvesting is carried out by distant water fishing nations, including the USA, Japan, Taiwan, China, and Korea. Problems of achieving sustainability and efficiency in the harvesting of the stocks by disparate countries are made more difficult due to changes in the harvesting levels of one fleet affecting the rents of another fleet through changes in the age distribution of stock. These types of problem are under review by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. Results from an age-structured steady-state bioeconomic model are used to show: the changes in fleet rents and catches of tuna if all fleets form a cooperative grand coalition to deploy fishing effort to maximize rents over the region; the likely non-stability of the grand coalition; and the inferior Nash Equilibria outcomes if fleets fish non-cooperatively to maximize their own rents.

The catch in trading fishing access for foreign aid

Abstract The Pacific island countries depend heavily on bilateral aid. Much of this aid is provided by distant water fishing nations in exchange for cheap access to the Western and Central Pacific tuna fishery. Japan access fees (approximately US $8 million) are comparable to about 5% of Japanese aid to the region (approximately US $150 million). If access fees were maximised, there is potential for the access fees to match, possibly double, total Japanese aid to the region. It is argued that aid dependency is decreasing the transparency of fishing treaties, decreasing the flexibility of government spending, exposing the Pacific island countries to large financial risks associated with possible aid withdrawal, and stifling the region's own efforts for fisheries, and broader economic, development.

Multilateral Governance of Fisheries: Management and Cooperation in the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Fisheries

The tuna resources of the Western and Central Pacific are the world's largest and most valuable fisheries of their type and are of significant economic importance to the Pacific island countries through whose waters they migrate. Two major concerns exist with the current governance of this fishery. First, Pacific island countries receive only a small share of the resource rents from the tuna fisheries. Second, the current management structure of the fisheries will not ensure the long-term sustainability of the resources. This paper derives a model to show that the sustainability of the resource can be improved when a single policymaker acts as Stackelberg leader and sets a tax, or an equivalent quantity instrument, to maximize rents from the resource. A practical institutional mechanism is presented that mimics the model's rent maximization outcome and that offers substantial benefits to both Pacific island countries and distant water fishing nations.

Establishing a regional fisheries management organisation for the Western and Central Pacific tuna fisheries

On the 4th of September 2000 coastal States and fishing nations of the Western and Central Pacific adopted the “Convention on the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean” by a majority vote. It is the first agreement to be negotiated on the basis of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement following its adoption in 1995. This article analyses the process leading up to the adoption of the tuna convention in the Western and Central Pacific by applying regime theory. The formation of international regimes is generally understood to comprise of three stages; agenda formation, negotiation and operationalisation. The analysis tests the validity of hypotheses based on power, interests and cognitive factors in explaining the formation of the tuna convention for the Western and Central Pacific. It concludes that different theoretical approaches have relevance during the stages of regime formation.

Managing tuna fisheries: a new strategy for the Western and Central Pacific Ocean

The paper describes a bioeconomic model of the western and central Pacific tuna fisheries in which three main gear types exploit four main tuna species following migratory paths through the Exclusive Economic Zones of 12 Pacific Island nations. The results of the model suggest that the net value of the fisheries can be increased substantially by reducing the overall amount of fishing effort and altering the balance of effort towards gear types which exploit older age classes of fish.

Science arrangements for the regional management of tuna fisheries

Pacific, metropolitan and distant-water fishing nations are negotiating a regional regime for managing the western and central Pacific tuna fishery. The regime will require an arrangement that delivers high-quality scientific advice. But regional science arrangements have often developed without the benefit of planning and without close attention to management requirements. We use the western and central Pacific fishery to highlight the types of science functions and attributes required for effective regional fishery management. In establishing science arrangements, nations will need to balance national interests, such as participation in stock assessments, against the wider interests of resource management which requires unbiased scientific advice.

Maximizing Resource Rent From the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Fisheries

Rent generated by the tuna fisheries occurring in the waters of Pacific Islands Nations is estimated for various levels and combinations of purse-seine, pole-and-line, frozen tuna longline, and fresh tuna longline fishing effort, using a multi-species, multi-fleet bioeconomic model. The underlying population model integrates available information on the population dynamics of skipjack, yellowfin, bigeye, and Southern albacore tunas in the Pacific Ocean. The economic model utilizes the most recent data on fishing effort costs for the purse seine, pole-and-line, and longline fleets operating in the western and central Pacific Ocean, along with recent estimates of prices by species, method of capture and market, and estimates of demand elasticities. The results of the model indicate that fishery rent could be increased substantially above the current level by decreasing the size of all fleets, with the possible exception of the tuna longline fleet. The results also suggest that the countries of the region co...