Tuna seine operators called for licensing

Captains and operators of all tuna purse seine fishing vessels have been urged to call into designated ports for inspection clearance for licensing.
National Fisheries Authority (NFA) said this in a paid advertisement last week for all captains and operators to call into PNG’s designated port of their choice.
According to the authority, this has to be done prior to their first fishing trip for next year’s fishing period.
Tuna purse seine fishing vessel refers to any fishing vessel targeting tunas and skipjacks with purse seine fishing gears.
“Original licenses will be kept by the authority and issued to the vessel’s captain’s operators, representatives or agents,” it said.
“All domestic and locally based foreign vessels those that are listed will have to undergo audit inspection prior to final CI is conducted.
“The inspections will be conducted the same day before departure for the first fishing trip for 2019 fishing period.”
Tuna, the largest of PNG fisheries represents a balance of both domestic industry development and Foreign (DWFN) Access arrangements.
The fishery is primarily based on the skipjack and yellow fin fish species with smaller quantities of bigeye and albacore.
According to NFA, the fishery is guided by a National Tuna Fishery Management Plan, which establishes an overall management structure and an application framework for the longline, purse-seine and pole and line fisheries, including licence limits and total allowable catches.
PNG has embarked on onshore investments in the tuna fishery and as a result foreign and domestic access by purse-seine vessels is increasingly linked to commitment to onshore investment, preferably in the form of tuna processing.
Catch is usually about 150,000mt to 200,000mt per year but it is estimated that the resource can sustain much higher annual catches of 250,000mt to 300,000mt.
The potential market value is about K1 billion depending on the commodity price.
Catch from PNG waters accounts for 20-30 per cent of the regional catch and is about 10 per cent of the global catch.
In the recent past, catch trend by vessel category has changed, such that 50 per cent is now caught by vessels associated with on shore investments in PNG and the other 50 per cent is caught by foreign purse-seine vessels who used to catch most of the tuna.
PNG currently has access agreements with Taiwan, Korea, Philippines and China and is negotiated on an annual basis. A multilateral treaty arrangement exists with USA.
These establish the number of vessel allowed to enter the fishery and the access fees payable.
Usually about 130 foreign purse-seine vessels fish in PNG waters each year, but this is now decreasing as some are associated with the on shore investments in PNG and are fishing under the FSM arrangement