Out of the 42 purse seiners operating in the area, 13 fly the Seychellois flag and 3 the Mauritian flag. These vessels fish, land, use port facilities, shipyards and canneries of IOC countries, creating jobs across the whole fishery supply chain. “When tourism collapsed during COVID, the economy relied on the tuna purse seine activity” stressed Mr Philippe Michaud, consultant at the Ministry of Fisheries and the Blue Economy, who hosted the meeting in Seychelles. Ship-owners kept on sending crew, chartering flights at their own costs, undertaking fishing trips and supplying local canneries, despite the global pandemic crisis.

The common declaration signed by the four ministers after a closed session in the afternoon recognized the importance of strengthening cooperation amongst the IOC countries dependent on the purse seine fishery for their canneries through coherence and coordinated approach for safeguarding their economic dependency and in the management of tuna fisheries.

The sector argued that while the Seychellois and European purse seine fleets operating in the Indian Ocean have endured a reduction of more than 22% of their catches since 2014, some other IOTC countries which are among the biggest harvesters have objected to the yellowfin rebuilding plan amended in 2021. Anne-France Mattlet, Director of Europêche’s Tuna Group, commented “With countries like Oman, which caught around 7000 tons of yellowfin tuna in 2014 and reported nearly 70 000 tons of catches in 2020, it is no wonder why the stock keeps declining. This also explains why IOTC global catches increased by 6% despite the tuna purse seine fleet hefty effort reductions. IUU practices, like use of large-scale driftnets, forbidden by the UN in 1991 and reiterated by IOTC in 2017, are on-going in the Indian Ocean and some IOTC countries are ignoring the perverse effects of those gears in the ecosystems.”

Yet, for the 26^th session of IOTC, countries like Maldives and Kenya are turning a blind eye to these threats to the stock’s sustainability and propose instead to reduce purse seine yellowfin and skipjack catches by an additional 20% respectively. They also insist on imposing a three-month closure to the FAD fishery, without any scientific assessment of the FAD reductions that already took place in the last few years. Mr. Houmed M’Saidie, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment in Comoros, stressed that “Proposals should be science-based”.

The four Ministers agreed on the fact that “all fishing gears targeting tuna have an effect on the population and the ecosystem and therefore all shall contribute in a balanced and equal proportion to any reduction decided at IOTC”. 

Press contacts: 

Daniel Voces, Managing Director of Europêche: +32 2 230 48 48 daniel.voces@europeche.org

Anne-France Mattlet, Europêche Tuna Group Director: anne-france.mattlet@europeche.org

EP Press Release – IOC Fisheries Summit May 5th

As an analogy, let us imagine a driver that systematically ignores a red light, every day, for around thirty years. This traffic light was set by an authority to address an issue at a crossroads, including a video-camera to monitor compliance. While the driver is identified, no ticket is handed out. This authority believes that penalties do not help to bring change and simply calls the driver from time to time, to tap on the shoulder and encourage to do better next time. To no avail. At the same time, hundreds of cars crash to avoid hitting the non-compliant driver. To add injury to insult, the reckless driver is rewarded with a car insurance fee discount every year. One would think such a situation cannot happen in reality.

Nonetheless in the world of fishing, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a Resolution in 1991 calling upon all members of the international community to implement before 31 December 1992 a global moratorium on all large-scale pelagic drift net fishing on the world’s oceans and seas.[1] Despite the UN ban, in 2012, the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) expressed concern that these gears were still widely used in both high seas and coastal waters of the Indian Ocean. As a consequence, the IOTC adopted a Resolution[2] that year, reinforced by another in 2017[3], setting the prohibition to use large-scale driftnets in the whole IOTC Area.  

In other words, long time ago the UN and the IOTC (a.k.a. the authorities) adopted a rule, setting a red light on the use of large pelagic drift nets. Regrettably, according to Europêche, in the Indian Ocean many of the countries that were supposed to stop by the red light, as our driver, never did, and even increased the use of drift nets or its size to over 30 km in length and more than 20 m in depth[4]. This happened because these countries were never penalized, as IOTC Member countries, and international authorities, preferred to use the tap on the shoulder approach rather than sanctioning such behavior. Furthermore, the IOTC rewarded some drift net fisheries with catch limits of yellowfin tuna since 2017 (discount on the car insurance fee), despite the existing gear ban and the fact those fisheries are poorly monitored, not even complying with the minimal IOTC requirements for observer programs or sampling in port.

Javier Garat, President of Europêche, declared: “One would expect things to go differently in 2021. Well, this is not the case. The IOTC will hold a Special Session between 7 and 12 March, with the focus put on the rebuilding of the stock of yellowfin tuna. The EU and Maldives have formally tabled proposals to the meeting. Despite the European Commission’s zero-tolerance approach towards IUU fishing, those proposals are still rewarding large pelagic drift net fisheries with catches of yellowfin tuna and solely tapping them on the shoulder through recommendations to improve gear configuration. Hence, after almost thirty years of non-compliance with international regulations, our reckless driver will continue business as usual, whereas all other fisheries are penalized with higher cuts, crashing their cars to compensate for that.” Mr Garat concluded: “We are talking about a gear banned by the EU since 2002 for migratory fisheries such as albacore, Bluefin tuna or swordfish. The EU must ensure coherence between the internal and external dimension of the CFP”.

Tuna-RFMOs have been criticized for not being able to enforce what they adopt. Unfortunately, in this case, Europêche must agree with that statement. The European fishing sector strongly believes it is high time for IOTC and other tuna-RFMOs to make drift net fisheries accountable for their actions, rather than rewarding them after thirty years of trespassing red lights. The next IOTC Special Session might represent a good opportunity for this body to start using the stick rather than the carrot. The EU should also consider to take market measures against IOTC countries not compliant with international rules. Otherwise, it may be too late for the yellowfin tuna stock to recover and for the protection of sensitive species, despite the efforts and cuts imposed on the European tuna fishing fleet.

[1] Resolution A/RES/46/215, Large-scale pelagic drift-net fishing and its impact on the living marine resources of the world’s oceans and seas

[2] Resolution 12/12

[3] Resolution 17/07

[4] Cetacean bycatch in Indian Ocean tuna gillnet fisheries (page 41)

Press contacts:

Daniel Voces, Managing Director of Europêche: +32.2.230.48.48 europeche@europeche.org

EP Press Release – IOTC Driftnets