New push to conserve tuna stocks

EIGHT Pacific Island countries, including PNG, are enforcing five new measures to conserve tuna in the Western Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO).
The five new measures are:
1) Reducing US treaty effort;
2) Closing the rest of the high seas between 10 nautical miles and 20 nautical miles south to purse seine fishing;
3) Extending the fish aggregating devise (FAD) closer to five or six months;
4) Extending FAD closure on foreign fishing vessels only (or maybe a complete ban on use of beacons by foreign vessels; and
5) Extending the FAD closure for purse seine fleets of commission (Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission) member countries whose long line fleets take more than 4,000 tonnes annually in the high seas.
National Fisheries Authority managing director Sylvester Pokajam made the disclosure while commenting on the status of tuna stock in the WCPO.
The eight countries are: Palau, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), PNG, Solomon Islands, Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands.
The countries drew up the additional measures prior to the fisheries ministers meeting in April this year during the Pacific Fisheries Agency (PFA) officials and ministers meeting in Solomon Islands.