Fisheries in the Pacific

Manuel Rauchholz
per day, and by 2013 it was US$6,000. 32 That rate increased once again in 2014 to
US$8,000. According to Maurice Brownjohn, commercial manager of the PNA office
in Majuro, fishing days were being traded for up to US$10,000 per fishing day in
2015, and in Papua New Guinea even up to US$12,000 with the amount expected to
move towards the vicinity of US$15,000 per fishing day in the years to come
(Brownjohn 2015, personal communication). In sum, the establishment of the PNA
executive office in 2010 to represent PNA interests in the global tuna fishing industry
has resulted in an increase in revenues for the eight-member group of PNA nations
in five years from US$60 million in 2011 to US$360 million in 2015. That is an
increase of five to six times the amount received in 2011 (Brownjohn 2015,
personal communication). 33 The industry is able and willing to pay these fees and
some fishing companies and fish processors would like to see a hike in the price of
tuna per metric tonne to about twice the amount of today’s going rate for skipjack,
which is a little over US$1,000 per metric tonne, to around US$2,000 or more
(Brownjohn 2015, personal communication).
If one takes the development of these numbers into account and calculates them
against the operating costs and profits of the purse seine tuna industry, one will be
surprised at how high the profits of the purse seine and global tuna industry has
been over the years.
The following table (tab. 1) represents self-reported data on operating costs and
income presented by purse seiners to the FSM National Fisheries Corporation
(NFC). 34 The two data sets in the table have been put into parallel columns by NFC
for easier comparison. The first represents the average self-reported figures of a
Japanese purse seine operator, while the second corresponds to the figures reported
by the average Chinese or Taiwanese operator, according to Peter Sitan (2014,
personal communication). One can see that the total revenue reported matches the
tuna price for skipjack in 2012 of about US$2,000 per metric tonne (see below).
32. During the same year the FSM sold 6,000 fishing days and could therefore account for US$36,000,000
in revenue for that year alone (Sitan 2014, personal communication). With the price now at US$8,000
per fishing day the FSM can expect a revenue increase up to US$48,000,000 for 2014 and 2015.
33. From the creation of the EEZs in 1979 until 2001, the FSM by comparison received US$170 million
for the first 22 years of licensing or an average of annual fishing fees amounting to US$7.7 million.
34. I want to thank Peter Sitan, Director of the FSM NFC for providing me with this data set. It must be
mentioned here that these numbers do not coincide with figures shared with me by some observers
and vessel operators who admitted to targeting up to 16,000 tonnes of tuna per vessel and year under
the VDS, especially since the price of tuna has come down to little over US$1,000 per metric tonne. One
Taiwanese fish-master kept shaking his head in astonished disbelief at the rate he and the other 300
purse seiners in PNA waters were depleting fish stocks. According to his estimation in 2012, tuna stocks
could hardly last at a sustainable level for another 10 years. The data of some observers regarding the
average size of skipjack tuna landed in 2015 compared to 2009 in FSM and surrounding waters
confirms these assumptions. Average fish size has fallen from 60-70 cm (reproductive size and age) to
only 30-40 cm in 2015 (juveniles).
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