Call made for sustainable fisheries industry

By PETER ESILA
THE biggest single resource found in the Pacific region is tropical tuna, commercial manager of Parties to the Nauru Agreement Morris Brownjohn says.
At the Apec CEO Summit panel discussion on Saturday, he said the Pacific supplied half of the world’s skipjack tuna.
“This is a fishery in the exclusive economic zone of the of the island nations of the equatorial belt,” he said.
“The other ocean areas suffer because they are high seas-based.
“When they are high seas, no one takes responsibility, so those who are exploiting the fisheries will look after their interests and conservation will be someone else’s problem.
“In our region, we have taken the hard decisions. What we need to do now is to not just sustain the fisheries, but also better participation to provide employment, food security and also take advantage of our comparative advantages.
“If we are harvesting a million tonnes of sustainable tuna in our waters, we should see the primary processing here, provide jobs here.
“We should be utilising all the byproducts here so this serves other industries like aquaculture, agriculture because they can be fed from the non- exports.”