Monday, August 15, 2005
Fisheries body: RP role in Pacific tuna group uncertain
By Allen V. Estabillo
THE Philippines' participation in an international tuna commission that now governs the tuna-rich Pacific fishing grounds remains uncertain due to the continuing failure of the Senate to ratify a convention that established the fishery body.
Sani Macabalang, regional technical director of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in Region, said the country will continue to be an "observer" in the tuna commission until the Senate ratifies the Multilateral High Level Convention (MHLC) on Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.
The MHLC, which sets the conservation and management of tuna resources along the Pacific fishing grounds, pave the way for the creation of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) in December last year.
Macabalang said the ratification of the MHLC is still pending at the Senate's foreign relations committee headed by Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
He said BFAR and local tuna industry players have been continuously lobbying for the ratification of such convention but the political intramural eventually their efforts.
"This is something that the Senate should consider because the country really needs it. We're just hoping that this would be ratified before the year ends," Macabalang said.
Local tuna industry players, especially the Socsksargen Federation of Fishing Associations and Allied Industries Inc. (SFFAAII), earlier pushed for the Senate's ratification of the convention before this month's meeting of the WCPFC's scientific committee.
The MHLC and its governing body, the WCPFC, were officially launched in December last year by at least 18 nations in a conference in Pohnpei, Micronesia.
The convention provides for the establishment of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission that would determine the total allowable catch of tuna species and allocate catch among its member-countries.
But the Philippines, which was among the primary signatories to the MHLC's "Convention on Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Species in the Western and Central Pacific" forged by at least 29 nations in September 2000, was only granted an observer status in the new tuna commission pending the ratification of the MHLC.
Macabalang said the country's official participation in the tuna commission is very crucial as it would help protect the country's territorial waters from the worsening illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) tuna fishing.
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(August 15, 2005 issue)
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