Greenpeace response to MRAG Asia Pacific report into IUU fishing in the Pacific

Responding to today’s MRAG Asia Pacific report into IUU fishing in the Pacific, Greenpeace campaigner Oliver Knowles said:

“This is daylight robbery, clear and simple. A resource that belongs to the Pacific community is being stripped out by illegal operators, many of them from countries far away from the Pacific.

“The issue belies a serious problem – that tuna fisheries in the Pacific are not well controlled or policed. On top of the illegal catches, there is also the huge problem of destructive, wasteful and unsustainable fishing that is legal. The two combined are putting huge pressure on Pacific tuna stocks.

“If we’re serious about protecting tuna fishing in the Pacific governments need to invest more in policing and monitoring fishing to put pressure on the illegal operators.  They also need to take strong action to clean up the legal operators by phasing out wasteful operations like purse seining with Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs) and reigning in destructive and exploitative tuna longlining by banning transhipments at sea.”