RETAILERS PRE-ORDER OVER 70 MILLION CANS OF SUSTAINABLY FISHED TUNA FROM THE PACIFIC.

Retailers, wholesalers, restaurants, processors, traders and other commercial buyers interested in seeking Pacific partners willing to develop a pole and line fishing operation ordered online (1) can do so through an initiative started by Greenpeace.

"We are optimistic our pre-order petition and the market players will encourage the region to look into this sustainable fishing method seriously at the Tuna Forum which got underway in Port Moresby today.

"The Pacific can take advantage of this market demand for pole and line caught skipjack by developing their own domestic pole and line industry to stop their future from being fished to death," said Greenpeace Australia Pacific Oceans Team Leader, Lagi Toribau.

Destructive fishing methods are rife in the Pacific and this was made evident today after activists on board the Greenpeace ship, Esperanza found a fish aggregation device (FAD), also known as a deadly fishing magnet, floating in international waters between the maritime borders of the Federated States of Micronesia and Papua New Guinea.

"The two-month ban on fish aggregating devices is not sufficient to stop the depletion of Pacific tuna stocks and safeguard marine life," said Greenpeace Australia Pacific Oceans campaigner Josua Turaganivalu.


 "A total global ban on the use of FADs is urgently needed to help tuna stocks recover and to protect marine biodiversity. The region needs to move towards domesticating a sustainable pole and line skipjack fishery immediately."

"We need to end this plunder, which is driving tuna stocks -- the lifeline of the Pacific -- towards collapse," said Mr Turaganivalu.

"Urgent action is needed. By agreeing to close all four pockets of international waters in the Pacific at its annual meeting in December, and by halving the tuna catch in the region, the WCPFC can become a global leader in ocean conservation."

The west and central Pacific ocean currently supplies over 56% of the worlds tuna, with the vast majority taken by distant water fishing nations from Asia, the United States of America and Europe.