HONIARA, SOLOMON ISLANDS, MONDAY 20 JUNE 2011: The Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) Director Dr Transform Aqorau, congratulated Solomon Islands Cabinet on their decision, announced Friday to close the tuna fishery to foreign fishing vessels.

Reaching their maximum limit of fishing days, Solomon Islands will cease to allow foreign fishing vessels to fish for tuna from this time onward. Efforts are being made for Solomon Islands to purchase 1000 fishing days from a country that has underused their current allocation of fishing days.

The PNA operates a Vessel Day Scheme for purse seine vessels where a total number of days for fishing are set for the PNA area, and then divided between the eight PNA ocean states which can also trade days between them. Each PNA ocean state has what is referred to as a Party Allowable Effort (PAE) of days – if they use up their days they must close the fishery and purchase fishing days from another country so as to keep overall fishing effort in the PNA area within sustainable limits. In 2010, PNA committed to have hard limits on fishing, beginning in 2011, which should not be exceeded by any Party.

The Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) includes Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. Collectively, the PNA controls 25-30% of the world’s supply of tuna and cooperate to sustainably manage and develop this key resource.

Hon. John Moffat Fugui, Acting Minister for Fisheries and Marine Resources, said: “Solomon Islands’ allocated fishing days or Parties Allowable Effort (PAE) of 2,146 days for this year from the PNA’ TAE has already been fully utilized by the middle of June this year.  This was due to the exceptionally very high fishing activities as a result of good fishing conditions in our waters for the early months of this year.   The closing of our waters from purse seine fishing however will be reviewed later on after the situation with the over-fishing of our allocated days has been resolved through the transfer and purchasing of additional days from any of our PNA member countries. 

“Solomon Islands has been generously offered an additional 1, 000 fishing days by one of our PNA member countries and necessary steps have been taken by official of my Ministry to work in collaboration with the Director of the PNA Office and the PNA member country concerned so these days are sold through the PNA vessel day trading scheme to any of our current bilateral partners.”

PNA Director Dr Transform Aqorau said:

“The PNA is proud to support Solomon Islands to close the fishery while they make efforts to purchase fishing days from other PNA countries. The announcement of Solomon Islands Cabinet is an important step to supporting the PNA’s goal of creating the world’s largest sustainable tuna purse seine fishery.”