Sharks among the tuna

Pim Opinion

The Pacific fishing industry is on a dangerous course; it is at risk of falling into confusion with consequent serious loss to the Pacific Island nations for many of whom the fish in their waters is their only really commercial asset.

In all of this the Americans, who have given a great deal to the Pacific in very many ways, are seen as the primary culprits.

Western Samoa has played host to the U.S.S Texas and the American Tuna Boat Association, which has a long-established reputation for pugnacity and bullying, and which is acknowledged to have one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, has introduced huge purse-seine vessels to the ocean with what would appear to be little or no regard for their effect upon an ecology upon which many people, in very small countries, depend for their meagre living.

There is justice in the contention that the islanders’ dislike of the American fishing companies led, more or less directly, to the flirtation which Kiribati is having with the Soviet Union, a matter which has upset the security of the region and given other countries, among them Japan, Australia and New Zealand, cause for anxiety.

Every time a ’’super-seiner” sporting the Stars and Stripes is seen powering its way through an island nation’s e.e.z., scooping up every fish in sight, the reputation of the U.S. goes down.

Solomon Islands was widely applauded among its Pacific neighbors for its capture of the poaching ’’super-seiner” Jeanette Diana for which the owners later paid US$7OO,OOO to buy back.

The United States immediately applied trade sanctions.

The Americans say, accurately enough, that they had no option but to invoke the Magnusson Act. It is mandatory in cases such as that involving the Jeanette Diana. At the same time, the small countries saw it all as a case of a super-power bullying a country so small that its total national budget barely equals the phone bill at the White House. Whatever the justice of that case, the fact would appear to remain that very little, if any, effort was made to see the

situation from the islanders’ viewpoint, or to guard against it happening again and again and yet again.

A practical solution to the whole sorry affair was proposed at a meeting in Nauru some years ago, and raised again at the last meeting of the South Pacific Forum. This, in broad terms, suggested a system of licensing, handled by a central body such as SPEC or the SPC.

All of the fishing nations -- Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the USSR and the USA - could pay for rights to fish these waters, and might also provide a small levy, say 5 per cent, on the value of the catch. In total these fees might produce $2OO million or so which the small nations could share on some equitable basis of so much per head of population, or so much per square kilometre of water.

The Japanese, particularly, are disposed to be gloomy about the future of Pacific fisheries and have noticeably withdrawn their ships from what might be termed sensitive Pacific areas. Industry experts in Tokyo say that fish stocks are being depleted by the big purse-seine boats, that such as the American Tuna Boat Association’s members pay no regard to the ecological or political consequences of their style of fishing and that, as a result, enormous damage is being done to the industry as a whole and to the overall security of democratic and free-trading nations in the region.

There would appear to be pressing need, therefore, for much greater attention to be given, first in Washington, and then in the region as a whole, to reaching some mode of operation fair to all, which will avoid further upsets, both financial and political, and which will allow the island nations to derive reasonable income from their major asset.

It is, in the long term, far better, one might suggest, that the Pacific Islands earn their own support in this way than that they should be forced to live on hand-outs, or take risky gambles by trying to get into the high-capital fishing industry on their own account.