The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) has started promoting vigorously its own Public Private Partnership Program Toward Sustainable Tuna (PPTST) in an attempt to prevent the depletion of the tuna stocks in the Coral Triangle.
The Coral Triangle is a vast expanse of 6 million square kilometers covering the waters of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
The region generates 40 percent of the Western Central Pacific’s total tuna catch and employs hundreds of thousands of fishermen.
Next to Indonesia, the Philippines is Asia’s largest tuna exporter.
In 2010 it was the Western and Central Pacific Ocean’s seventh best tuna generator.
The country shipped 106,449 metric tons (MT) of prime-grade yellowfin, big-eye, skipjack and other varieties of tuna to the United States, United Kingdom and Germany in 2010.
About 52 percent of the country’s fish exports is comprised of various species of tuna caught in Mindoro, Ilocos Norte, Negros and Sarangani.
However, rising demand and decades of intensive, uncontrolled fishing have threatened the country’s tuna stocks.
Unless we closely manage and protect remaining populations, our tuna industry might collapse, warned Joel Palma, conservation programs vice president for the WWF-Philippines.
PPTST was launched in 2011 to improve yellowfin tuna management practices for 5000 fishermen in 112 tuna fishing villages around the Lagonoy Gulf in Bicol and 28 tuna fishing communities in Occidental Mindoro.
The program harnesses market power and consumer demand to support sustainable fishing gear and methods, such as artisanal fishing, hand-line reels and circle hooks.
Hand-line fishing is done aboard small boats. Fishers use single hooks to catch one tuna at a time. This ensures that only mature, high-quality tuna are caught while minimizing the problem of bycatch[the unintentional] catching [of] species, which are usually discarded, Palma said.
The deployment of revolutionary C-shaped circle hooks has also reduced sea turtle deaths by as much as 90 percent.
When turtles bite down on these hooks, they just fold inward. Altering the shape of the hook was all that was needed to minimize turtle bycatch for tuna fishers, Palma added.
The problem of bycatch wastes is an estimated 40 percent of global hauls annually.
PPTST also works to improve meat-handling practices.
All fish theoretically start as Grade-A tuna. Poor handling degrades meat quality. A fish caught just three hours before being sold can have Grade-B or Grade-C meat if it is badly bruised. Low-grade tuna sells for about P80 per kilo, while sashimi-grade cuts retail for up to P300 per kilo, Palma stressed.
Due to current practices, almost 70 percent of all sold tuna is classified as Grade-C,said WWF-Philippines PPTST Project Manager Joann Binondo said.
Establishing long-term market access, promoting responsible fisheries management, providing selectively caught tuna to market actors and environmentally aware consumers and reaching Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification are among the project’s objectives.
So far, PPTST has successfully organized municipal tuna fishers associations in all 15 local government units (LGU) in the Lagonoy Gulf, plus six LGUs in the Mindoro Strait, spearheaded registration and licensing of tuna fishers, vessels and gear to minimize bycatch and illegal fishing, deployed 1,000 tuna tags to make the fishery traceable and completed a series of training sessions on proper tuna handling to ensure that exported tuna continually meet international quality standards.
The European Commission (EC) recently gave the Philippine government a yellow card rating for being unable to sufficiently manage illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
PPTST offers solutions not just to eliminate IUU fishing, but to restore overall fisheries productivity.
Funded by Coop, Bell Seafood, Seafresh and the German Investment and Development Corp., PPTST involves European seafood companies and their local suppliers, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), LGUs in Mindoro and Bicol, the WWF Coral Triangle Program, WWF-Germany and WWF-Philippines.
The secret is to add more value to tuna, rather than forcing people to fish more. We must secure quality tuna without seriously increasing fishing effort. We aim to reach [MSC] certification by 2016, Binondo said.
Our goal is to ensure that our tuna stocks last for many more generations. Through the support of our allies and the hard work of artisanal fishers, PPTST will strike a balance between ecology and the economy, she concluded.
2014 BusinessMirror