Seychelles’ proposed changes to IOTC resolutions accepted |01 July 2019

Mr Lucas

The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) held its 23rd annual meeting in Hyderabad, India, from 17 to 21 June 2019, which a delegation from Seychelles attended.

During this five-day meeting the Seychelles delegation presented four proposed amendments to existing IOTC resolutions, all of which were approved by IOTC members despite some concessions.

“We had observed certain loopholes in some of the resolutions which we felt could be tightened through our proposed amendments,” Vincent Lucas, chief fisheries officer at the Seychelles Fishing Authority (SFA), explained during an interview with media.

The principal secretary for fisheries, Jude Talma, was also present at the interview.

One of the proposed amendments, brought by Seychelles, was the adoption of new measures to improve the management of fish aggregating devices (FADs), which are floating objects designed to attract pelagic fish such as tuna.

These FADs allow fishing vessels to electronically assess how many and at what depth these fish are located.

Seychelles brought this proposal with aim to enforce Resolution 18/08 to mitigate the ecological impact associated with drifting FADs, especially its beaching, damage to coral reefs and marine pollution.

“According to the resolution, vessels were not allowed to have more than 350 deployed and active FADs but some vessels chose to deploy their FADs and then switch off their transmission signals. They could have had 500 FADs in the water but the authorities would only be aware of only 350 because the other FADs were undetectable,” Mr Lucas explained.

It is to be highlighted that the number of FADs which can be deployed at any one time has now been lowered from 350 to 300 and the total number of FADs which a vessel can acquire for one year stands at 500.

He noted that the proposed amendment has now tightened this loophole by changing the term active FADs to operational FADs.

“This means that a vessel is not permitted to have any FADs in the water if it is not operational. To be considered operational it must have been activated and registered to a satellite company, switched on and deployed,” Mr Lucas stated.

Mr Lucas noted that Port Victoria has increased its measures to control FADs, wherein vessels will have to notify the port of the number of FADs onboard whenever it goes off to sea and when it returns.

Furthermore the re-activation of FADs will now only be done after notifiying the relevant authority.

IOTC members also agreed to Seychelles’ proposal that all FADs should be constructed using biodegradable materials – particularly for its main structure – by 2022 in order to reduce the amount of marine littering caused by FADs.

Non-entangling materials are also expected to become a common feature of these future FADs given that current FADs are constructed using nets, ropes, and lines which entangle turtles and other marine animals that come into contact with them. They also pose a threat to corals.

Another amendment which was voted in favour of by the IOTC was related to the chartering of vessels where Seychelles sought to ensure that chartering is not used as a temporary transfer mechanism to increase the fishing capacity of a vessel.

“There is a resolution which allows countries to charter a fishing vessel from contracting parties and cooperating non-contracting parties (CPCs) but we found a loophole in this,” PS Talma explained.

“We found that vessels’ owners were using the resolution in such a way that undermined other existing resolutions such as the yellowfin tuna quota.”

PS Talma explained that although some countries such as Seychelles have to adhere to the yellowfin tuna quota of 33,000 tonnes, other countries that have historically been recorded to catch less than 5000 tonnes of yellowfin tuna per fishing vessels have not been conditioned to such a quota.

Such countries include Mauritius and Madagascar.

“Because of this we noted some of the vessels that fish in Seychelles waters were looking to charter their vessels in Madagascar because Madagascar did not have a quota hence they could have fished an exceeding amount of yellowfin,” PS Talma remarked.

This, PS Talma continued, defeats the purpose of the yellowfin quota adopted as of 2017 by IOTC members to rebuild the Indian Ocean yellowfin tuna stock, which has depleted considerably over the years due to over-fishing.

“Our proposal stated that vessels in one country cannot charter in another country to undermine or circumvent another resolution and this was accepted.”

Seychelles also brought an amendment concerning Resolution 17/04 which bans the discard of by-catch caught by purse seine vessels.

Following the adoption of this resolution in 2017, local businesses benefitted greatly from by-catch entering Port Victoria.

The downside to this resolution however was that the vessels also had to bring in non-targeted species that may contain toxin or high level of toxins into the port, and which had to subsequently be brought to the landfill.

After this amendment however, purse seiners are allowed to discard species which may contain toxin or high level of toxins – such as trigger fish and the great barracuda – at sea rather than having to cause this undue convenience.

Lastly, the IOTC passed an amendment to strengthen Resolution 15/04 concerning the IOTC record of vessel authorised to operate in the IOTC area of competence.

The new measure introduced aims to give clarity to the mandatory information that needs to be submitted to the IOTC secretariat but primarily to ensure that vessels of less than 100 gross tonnage that are at least 12 metres in length, that are eligible for IMO registration, does so.

This will further enhance monitoring, control and surveillance of fishing vessels especially with regard to illegal, unreported and unreported (IUU) fishing and/or transfer of ownership of such vessels as they will be universally and uniquely identifiable by their IMO number.

The members of IOTC are Australia, Maldives, Mauritius, China, Mozambique, Comoros, Oman, Eritrea, Pakistan, European Union, Philippines, France, Seychelles, Guinea, Sierra Leone, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Sudan, Iran, Tanzania, Japan, Thailand, Kenya, United Kingdom, South Korea, Madagascar, Yemen and Malaysia.