Fisheries in the Pacific

Nathalie Hilmi, Tamatoa Bambridge, Alain Safa, Bran Quinquis and Paul D’Arcy
also employed on vessels for industrial fisheries. Women often market their catches,
creating new job opportunities. Sport fishing has potential for development as a
small-scale ecotourism activity for many communities. An important percentage of
the active population is employed in fisheries and associated activities, such as
processing and trading. It is important to note that in some island states, capture
fishery can contribute as much as 10% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and fish
consumption accounts for 50 to 90% of the diet of coastal communities, 3 to 4 times
the world average (FAO 2014). If the fisheries sector declines, fishers have to find
work outside the country and send back remittances to support relatives because
there are few alternative employment options in their country. In small-scale artisanal
fisheries, most catches are for human consumption. In industrial fisheries, bycatch
and discards are unregulated practices that increase pressure on the resources. Only
high-value species are retained because of a lack of storage space on vessels. This is
the practice of high-grading, which increases the pressure on oceans when the
industrial fishers have high volume export objectives.
Trade and income
Figure 3: Distribution of the Pacific tuna fisheries relative to EEZ
Sources: Bambridge and D’Arcy (2014: 119)
According to the latest report from the South Pacific Commission (Gillett 2014),
tuna fisheries account for just over 2.5 million tonnes in the Pacific (fig. 3). In this
volume’s first chapter, Allain et al. note that the tuna fishery in the Western and
Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) is the largest in the world with 2,627,696 tonnes
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