Greenpeace is criticizing the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commissions (WCPFC) for its lack of transparency in technical and compliance meetings held last week in Pohnpei, Micronesia.  

The meetings discussed the need for a comprehensive recovery plan for the region’s threatened tuna by December and the limiting of new vessels entering the region.

Greenpeace stated in a media release that the WCPFC kept most of its discussions on compliance “behind closed doors”. Greenpeace also voiced its alarm at the failure of WCPFC members to sustainably manage tuna stocks.

Greenpeace stated that it “criticised the commission for locking NGOs out of key parts of the meeting transparency over the behaviour of regional fishing fleets and the failure of the flag states to report data.”

According to Greenpeace campaigner Duncan Williams “It was revealed at the meeting that the majority of fishing fleet operations in the world’s largest tuna fishery are shrouded in secrecy. Many vessels fail to provide basic mandatory information about their operations”.

“When fleets are not reporting their whereabouts and what and how much they are catching. The region becomes vulnerable to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and overfishing. This, together with ever declining stocks, is a concern and has implications for consumers and markets which do not want to engage in sourcing tuna from questionable sources,”

Another Greenpeace campaigner Jeonghee Han, stated that “Fishing permission should be withdrawn from pirate fleets or vessels with a history of illegal activities that are reliant on the use of destructive fishing methods such as FADs,”

Among the changes Greenpeace is calling for are reduced vessel numbers, eliminating the least sustainable fishing methods, fixing of loopholes that facilitate unsustainable fishing.