Marine Policy 51 (2015) 584–591

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Marine Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol

Diversifying the use of tuna to improve food security and publichealth in Paciﬁc Island countries and territories
Johann D. Bell a,b,c,n, Valerie Allain a, Edward H. Allison d, Serge Andréfouët e,
Neil L. Andrew c,f, Michael J. Batty g, Michel Blanc a, Jeffrey M. Dambacher h,John Hampton a, Quentin Hanich c, Shelton Harley a, Anne Lorrain e, Michael McCoy i,
Nicholas McTurk j, Simon Nicol a, Graham Pilling a, David Point k, Michael K. Sharp a,
Paula Vivili l, Peter Williams aaFisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems Division, Secretariat of the Paciﬁc Community, B.P. D5, 98848 Noumea, New Caledonia
Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science and Oceans, Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive, Suite 500, Arlington, VA 22202, USAcAustralian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, AustraliadSchool of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington, 3707 Brooklyn Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105, USAe
Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, B.P. A5, 98848 Noumea, New CaledoniafWorldFish, c/- Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australiag
Paciﬁc Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, PO Box 629, Honiara, Solomon Islandsh
CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics, GPO Box 1538, Hobart, TAS 7001, AustraliaiGillett, Preston and Associates, PO Box 3344, Lami, Suva, Fijij
Statistics for Development Division, Secretariat of the Paciﬁc Community, B.P. D5, 98848 Noumea, New CaledoniakInstitut de Recherche pour le Développement, GET OMP, Université Paul Sabatier, 31400 Toulouse, FrancelPublic Health Division, Secretariat of the Paciﬁc Community, B.P. D5, 98848 Noumea, New Caledoniab

art ic l e i nf o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 4 July 2014
Received in revised form
3 October 2014
Accepted 7 October 2014

The large tuna resources of the Western and Central Paciﬁc Ocean are delivering great economic beneﬁts to
Paciﬁc Island countries and territories (PICTs) through sale of licences to distant water ﬁshing nations andemployment in ﬁsh processing. However, tuna needs to contribute to Paciﬁc Island societies in anotherimportant way—by increasing local access to the ﬁsh required for good nutrition to help combat the world’s
highest levels of diabetes and obesity. Analyses reported here demonstrate that coastal ﬁsheries in 16 of the 22
PICTs will not provide the ﬁsh recommended for good nutrition of growing Paciﬁc Island populations, and thatby 2020 tuna will need to supply 12% of the ﬁsh required by PICTs for food security, increasing to 25% by 2035.
In relative terms, the percentages of the region’s tuna catch that will be needed in 2020 and 2035 to ﬁll the gap
in domestic ﬁsh supply are small, i.e., 2.1% and 5.9% of the average present-day industrial catch, respectively.
Interventions based on expanding the use of nearshore ﬁsh aggregating devices (FADs) to assist small-scaleﬁshers catch tuna, distributing small tuna and bycatch ofﬂoaded by industrial ﬂeets at regional ports, andimproving access to canned tuna for inland populations, promise to increase access to ﬁsh for sustaining thehealth of the region’s growing populations. The actions, research and policies required to implement theseinterventions effectively, and the investments needed to maintain the stocks underpinning the considerable
socio-economic beneﬁts that ﬂow from tuna, are described.
& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Tuna
Food security
Paciﬁc Islands
Population growthNon-communicable diseases

Many Paciﬁc Island countries and territories (PICTs) are receiving
unprecedented economic beneﬁts from the tuna ﬁsheries operating
within their exclusive economic zones (EEZs). These beneﬁts stemfrom the fact that the large catches made within the EEZs of PICTs(Supplementary Table 1) supply 430% of the world’s tuna, and fromthe control exerted over purse-seine ﬁshing by the eight countries
where most of the tuna are caught through the ‘vessel day scheme’[1,2]. The constraint on ﬁshing effort, combined with the importanceof tuna to world ﬁsh supply1, has seen licence fees from foreignﬁshing ﬂeets increase by 400% in recent years. These access feesnCorresponding author at: Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources andSecurity, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia.
Tel.: þ 61 24221 4883/þ 61 412 657319.
E-mail address: b.johann9@gmail.com (J.D. Bell).

1
The annual global catch of oceanic tuna species exceeds 4.4 million tonnes
and represents  7.5% of the  60 million tonnes of ﬁsh captured from the world’s
marine waters each year used directly for food; see http://www.fao.org/docrep/
016/i2727e/i2727e.pdf.

1. Introduction

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2014.10.005
0308-597X/& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

J.D. Bell et al. / Marine Policy 51 (2015) 584–591

contributed 11–63% of government revenue for six Paciﬁc Island
countries in 2012 and will make even greater contributions in 2014
(Table 1). Tuna processing and ﬁshing also provide up to 25% of GDP,and employ thousands of people, in several PICTs [3].
As impressive as the economic gains have been, the rich tuna
resources of the region are needed to assist Paciﬁc Island people inanother important way—combating the high and rising prevalence of
non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as heart disease anddiabetes, and the incidence of obesity [4]. The severity of the problem
is illustrated by the fact that nine of the 10 countries with the highest
rates of overweight and obesity, and seven of the 10 countries withthe highest rates of diabetes, are Paciﬁc Island nations (Supplementarymaterial). The increase in NCDs is due largely to a change in diet andlifestyles, driven by rapid rates of population growth and urbanization,
scarcity of arable land and growth of the global food trade [5].
Seafood, which is rich in protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins andminerals, and traditional root crops, are being replaced in Paciﬁc dietsby relatively cheap, energy-dense and nutritionally-poor imported
foods [4,5].
Given this context, Paciﬁc Island governments have beenencouraged to maintain high traditional levels of ﬁsh consumption
by providing access to a minimum of 35 kg of ﬁsh per person peryear [6].
The problem is that rapid population growth in several PICTs has
already outstripped the capacity of even well-managed coastal ﬁsheries (based mainly on coral reefs) to supply the required quantities
of ﬁsh [6]. As populations continue to grow (Supplementary Table 2),
and as coral reefs are degraded by climate change [7], the gap
between the ﬁsh required for food and the amount of ﬁsh that can be
harvested sustainably from reefs will increase considerably. In several
PICTs, ciguatera poisoning [8,9] also reduces the quantities of reef ﬁshavailable for consumption.
Aquaculture has some potential to contribute to ﬁsh supplies,
but the region’s tuna2 ﬁshery has the greatest capacity to ﬁll mostof the gap [6,7]. An option is to use the greater revenue fromindustrial ﬁshing licences to strengthen local economies andimprove the ability of Paciﬁc Island citizens to buy more nutritious foods. However, in the absence of government controls on
the quality of food imports [10] greater purchasing power could
well exacerbate the problem because increases in disposable
income and the rise in global food trade are among the causesof NCDs [5].
A more effective way to help ﬁght the rise of NCDs will be tostrengthen education campaigns on the health beneﬁts of ﬁsh andto give people in urban and rural areas direct access to tuna, and the
bycatch from tuna ﬁsheries, to supply them with the recommended
quantities of ﬁsh. Moreover, access to tuna for national food security
is an obligation under the Convention for the Conservation andManagement of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western andCentral Paciﬁc Ocean (Supplementary material), and in accordancewith resolution 66/158 by the United Nations General Assembly on
the right to food3. Importantly, no negative health effects linked tomercury concentrations are expected from increasing access to themost abundant tuna species in the region—skipjack and yellowﬁntuna (Supplementary material).
This study quantiﬁes the existing shortfalls in supply of reef ﬁsh
for food security among PICTs, and those projected to occur by 2020
and 2035 based on the latest population forecasts and estimates of2‘Tuna’ as used here also includes other large associated pelagic ﬁsh species
caught by the industrial ﬁshery and targeted by small-scale ﬁshers, e.g., mahi mahi,
wahoo and rainbow runner.
3
The full conclusions and recommendations of UN General Assembly Resolution 66/158 are contained in paragraphs 60–65 of the report available at http://
daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N12/456/40/PDF/N1245640.pdf?
OpenElement.

585

coral reef area; speciﬁes the amount of tuna needed to ﬁll the gap in2020 and 2035; and identiﬁes practical interventions to make tuna
more available to the growing urban and rural populations of theregion. It also describes the actions, research and policies needed to
implement these interventions effectively; and the investments
required to sustain the tuna stocks on which the economic andhealth beneﬁts for PICTs depend.

2. Material and methods
2.1. Population projections
The rural-urban population projections were based on thesame methods used for previous projections of the ﬁsh needed
for future food security in the Paciﬁc [6,11]. These methods do notincorporate the complex interplay between rural–urban migration, rural–urban fertility and mortality differentials, international
immigration and return migration trends. Migration data are themost problematic when undertaking sub-national population
projections in highly mobile Paciﬁc Island populations, because
regular collections or compilations of population movement, e.g.,community-based population registers, are virtually unknown in
the region. The population projections for 2020 and 2035 can be
expected to change as more comprehensive input data pertaining
to births, deaths and migration become available.

2.2. Fish needed for good nutrition in Paciﬁc Island countries andterritories
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that daily
protein intake for good nutrition should be 0.7 g of protein per kg
body weight per day, derived from a variety of sources to prevent
micronutrient deﬁciencies. Based on the predicted age structure of
populations in PICTs (SPC Statistics for Development Division) andage-weight relationships typical of the region, average protein
content of fresh ﬁsh of  20%, and the fact that most Paciﬁc Island
people cook ﬁsh whole and eat the ﬂesh from the head as well as the
body (thus using  80% of the weight of ﬁsh for food), it is estimatedthat annual average ﬁsh consumption of 35–42 kg per capita isrequired to provide 40–50% of total protein intake for Paciﬁc Island
populations.
The amount of ﬁsh needed by PICTs for food over the coming
decades was identiﬁed based on (1) the ﬁsh consumption required
to provide at least 40% of dietary protein (i.e., 35 kg of ﬁsh perperson per year) or the ﬁsh required to maintain the traditional
levels of ﬁsh consumption [6] where these are greater; and (2)predicted population growth in 2020 and 2035 (Supplementary
Table 2).
In the absence of detailed information on the sustainableproduction of coastal ﬁsheries for the great majority of PICTs, four
sets of information were used to estimate the quantities of ﬁshlikely to be available per person in each PICT for food under good
local management of coral reefs and climate change in 2020 and
2035: (1) the area of coral reef (km2) derived from the Millennium
Coral Reef Mapping Project [12]; (2) a median estimate of sustainable ﬁsheries production from coral reef habitats of 3 t per km2 ofreef per year [13]; (3) the predicted future population of each PICT(Supplementary Table 2); and (4) the projected effects of climatechange on coastal ﬁsheries production of PICTs for the 2035
estimate [9].
A different approach was used to estimate the ﬁsh required forfood in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where the rapidly growing
population presents particular problems for increasing ﬁsh consumption per capita. In particular, the large inland population

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J.D. Bell et al. / Marine Policy 51 (2015) 584–591

Table 1
Estimates of total government revenue derived from foreign ﬁshing vessel access and licensing fees for the eight countries that are the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA)
in 2012.
PNA member

FSM
Kiribati
Marshall Islands
Nauru
Palau
PNG
Solomon Islands
TuvaluPurse-seine effort (days)
sold or tradeda
5307
9479
995
1063
481
9229
1147
718

Access fees from purse-seineﬁsheries (USD)b,c

Other ﬁsheries
revenued (USD million)

Total ﬁsheries
revenue (USD)

Government
revenue (USD)

Fees as proportion of
government revenue (%)$3.5–5$11$2–3$0.5–1$1–2$15–20$3–4$4.5$30,000,000$58,000,000$7,500,000$6,000,000$4,000,000$65,000,000$9,000,000$8,000,000$158,091,416$91,700,000$45,394,949$33,446,746$36,503,750$2,544,928,117$269,524,954$27,007,455

19
63
17
18
11
3
3
30

$26,535,000$47,395,000$4,975,000$5,315,000$2,405,000$46,145,000$5,735,000$3,590,000

FSM ¼ Federated States of Micronesia; PNG¼ Papua New Guinea.
aSource: Report of the Purse-seine Vessel Day Scheme Administrator.
Calculated at the PNA minimum benchmark rate of $5000 per day, prevailing in 2012.
Note that the PNA benchmark rate will increase to $8000 per day in 2014.
d
Estimate of revenue from fees paid to countries by the US Treaty, longline and pole-and-line ﬁsheries, licensing and registration fees, and transhipping fees.
bc(deﬁned as people living 45 km from the coast or the major river
systems [6] and estimated to be  60% of the total population), haspoor access to ﬁsh and depends largely on crops for protein [14].
Planning to supply substantial additional ﬁsh to this inland population by 2020 and 2035 will be a major challenge [6]. Consequently,
the forecast for inland PNG was based on providing no improved
access to ﬁsh in 2013, access to 1 kg of marine ﬁsh per person in
2020, and access to 2 kg of marine ﬁsh and 1 kg of ﬁsh from
freshwater pond aquaculture [11] in 2035. For urban populations,provision was made to maintain the average consumption of 28 kg ofﬁsh per year [6]. Although riverine and coastal communities haverelatively high levels of ﬁsh consumption [6], the ﬁsh to be provided
to these communities was limited to the recommended 35 kg of ﬁsh
per person per year. Thus, the total amount of ﬁsh needed for food in
PNG was calculated as the urban population [presently  15% of total
population (Supplementary Table 2)]  28 kg, plus the ‘coastal’
population, representing both coastal communities and those within
5 km of a major river, (25%)  35 kg, plus the inland population(60%)  0 kg in 2013,  1 kg in 2020 and  3 kg in 2035.
2.3. Modelling
A qualitative modelling approach [15] was used to examine therelative effectiveness of various adaptations to provide ﬁsh for the
food security for coastal communities. The analysis considered theeffects of: (1) longstanding relationships among ﬁshing effort,
stocks of reef ﬁsh and inshore pelagic ﬁsh (including tuna), catch,markets and food security; (2) human population growth, habitat
degradation and climate change (i.e., the effects of the IPCC A2emissions scenario on reef ﬁsh and tuna stocks by 2035 [7]) as
drivers of these relationships; and (3) practical adaptations tomaintain access to adequate ﬁsh for food security in the face of
these drivers.
The model incorporated: the effects of subsistence and artisanalﬁsheries on the stocks of reef ﬁsh and nearshore pelagic ﬁshthrough the variables of ﬁshing effort, catch and the market valueof catch; dependence of food security on catch, which was determined by both ﬁshing effort and stock abundance, and which
suppressed the market value of the proportion of the catch sold
via a supply/demand relationship; reductions in stock abundance
due to increases in ﬁshing effort, although the effect of coastalﬁshing on stocks of tuna is negligible compared with the large
catches made by industrial ﬂeets (Supplementary Table 1) and wasomitted from the analysis; support for ﬁshing effort and foodsecurity based on the beneﬁts of catch; shaping of the system inpositive and negative ways by the key drivers—human population
growth and habitat degradation; creation of greater demand forfood by an increasing human population, leading to increasedﬁshing effort; degradation of the coral habitats that support reefﬁsh stocks by population growth; and planned adaptations
designed to maintain or increase access to ﬁsh for food security,
including integrated coastal zone management, management torebuild reef ﬁsh stocks, the use of nearshore ﬁsh aggregating
devices (FADs) to increase the catch of pelagic ﬁsh (including tuna),
pond aquaculture and post-harvest processing. Each variable in themodel was given a negative self-effect.

3. Results and discussion
3.1. Tuna needed for food security
Integrating the analyses of present-day human population levels
and those projected for 2020 and 2035 (Supplementary Table 2)with the area of coral reef (the best available proxy for reef ﬁsh
production [13]) in each PICT indicates that 16 of the 22 PaciﬁcIsland countries and territories will either increasingly fail toproduce enough reef ﬁsh to meet their basic or traditional needs
for ﬁsh, or have trouble distributing the ﬁsh from remote reefs tourban centers (Table 2). The problem is particularly signiﬁcant in
Melanesia, where the great majority of the region’s people live
(Supplementary Table 2).
To supply the ﬁsh recommended for good nutrition, or to maintaintraditionally higher levels of ﬁsh consumption, tuna will need toprovide 12% of the ﬁsh required by all PICTs by 2020, increasing to 25%
by 2035 (Fig. 1). In relative terms, the percentages of the region’s tuna
catch needed in 2020 and 2035 to ﬁll the gap in domestic ﬁsh supply
are small, i.e., 2.1% and 5.9% of the average recent industrial tuna catch,
respectively. The greatest quantities of tuna will be required in PNG,
Solomon Islands and Kiribati (Table 3).

3.2. Increasing access to tuna
Although only a modest proportion of the average regional
tuna catch needs to be allocated to meet the future needs of PICTs
for ﬁsh, making the ﬁsh readily accessible to coastal communities
and urban populations will require careful planning. Three interventions promise to help increase direct access to tuna.

J.D. Bell et al. / Marine Policy 51 (2015) 584–591

587

Table 2Estimates of coastal ﬁsheries production based on coral reef area for Paciﬁc Island countries and territories (PICTs), the amount of ﬁsh needed for food in 2013, 2020 and
2035, and expected surplus ( þ ) or deﬁcit (  ) in ﬁsh supply, relative to the recommended 35 kg per person per year or traditionally higher levels of ﬁsh consumption, foreach PICT for each period. PICTs have been placed into the three groups described in the Supplementary material. The quantities of ﬁsh needed in rural and urban areas of
PICTs in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia are given in Supplementary Tables 6–8.
PICT

Area of coral reef
habitat (km2)a

Coastal ﬁsh
production (t y  1)b

Fish needed for food (t)c

Surplus ( þ)/deﬁcit (  ) of coastal ﬁsh (t)d

2013

2020

2035

2013

2020

2035

9100
2100
600
600
200

9900
2200
600
600
200

11,300
2,400
600
600
200

98,68039,690
6,890
1,400
410

97,88039,590
6,890
1,400
410

92,71037,930
6,630
1,330
390

Group 2: Surplus supply of reef ﬁsh but with problems distributing this ﬁsh to urban centres
Fijif
25,66677,00030,10031,100FSMg
15,07445,2207,700
7,600
French Polynesiag,m15,12645,38018,40018,800Tongaf
5811
17,4303,600
3,600
Tuvalug,m
3,175
9,530
1,200
1,300
g
Wallis and Futuna
932
2,800
900
900
g,m
Niue
56
170
100
100

33,700
7,100
20,000
3,900
1,500
900
100

46,90037,52026,98013,830
8,330
1,900
70

45,90037,62026,58013,830
8,230
1,900
70

40,61036,54023,79012,920
7,700
1,800
60

Group 3: Deﬁcit of reef ﬁsh
Papua New Guineah
Vanuatuf
Solomon Islandsf
Guamf
Samoag
CNMIf
American Samoag
Kiribatig,mNaurug169,100
14,00035,6007,400
15,7002,300
2,400
13,400800

3000
 5,570
6,210
 5,390
 2,000 1,150
 1,000
3,260
 470

 18,200
 7,0702,210
 6,190
 1,600 1,350
 1,000
2,060
 570

 73,800
 10,400
 7,990
 6,710
 2,190
 1,580
 1,340
 890
 670

e

Group 1: Surplus supply of reef ﬁsh
New Caledoniaf
35,925
Marshall Islandsg,m13,930Palauf
2,496
Cook Islandsg,m667
g,mTokelau
204

27,086
1,244
8,535
238
465
250
368
4,320
7

107,780
41,790
7,490
2,000
610

98,760i
3,730
27,610j
710
14,000k750
1,100
12,960130l

95,8009,300
21,400
6,100
16,000
1,900
2,100
9,700
600

117,000
10,80025,4006,900
15,6002,100
2,100
10,900700aIncludes lagoons and drowned atolls and banks.
Based on median estimates of sustainable ﬁsh harvests of 3 t per km2 [13].
Based on estimates in Supplementary Tables 6–8.
dCalculations for 2035 include a 2–5% reduction in the production of coastal ﬁsheries due to the effects of climate change [9].
ePitcairn Islands not included but the total reef area of 48 km2 has more than enough ﬁsh for the 66 people who live there.
fFish needed for food based on recommended ﬁsh consumption of 35 kg per person per year (see Section 2).
g
Fish needed based on traditional levels of ﬁsh consumption for rural and/or urban populations which are greater than 35 kg per person per year [3,6].
hFish needed for food based on providing different quantities per capita for the urban, coastal/riverine and inland populations of PNG (see Section 2).
iIncludes 17,500 t of freshwater ﬁsh.
jIncludes 2000 t of freshwater ﬁsh.
kCoastal ﬁsheries production is high due to areas of relatively shallow water around the islands, catch estimate is provided by Samoa’s Ministry of Agriculture.
lBased on reconstructions of catches of coastal ﬁsh by the ‘Sea around us’ project, University of British Columbia.
mNational average incidence of ciguatera ﬁsh poisoning [8], renders several species of coral reef ﬁsh unﬁt for human consumption at some locations.
bc

3.2.1. Scaling up the use of nearshore ﬁsh aggregating devices (FADs)
Nearshore FADs4 assist small-scale ﬁshers to catch tuna moreeasily and safely. When FADs are located correctly they do not
attract vulnerable reef ﬁsh and the value of tuna caught aroundthem well exceeds the costs of materials and installation (Supplementary material). Qualitative modelling (Fig. 2) shows thatwhen nearshore FADs (combined with simple post-harvest methods to extend the shelf life of catches) are considered within thecontext of a broader range of drivers (e.g., human population
growth, habitat degradation and climate change) and interventions by coastal communities to maintain or improve the supply ofﬁsh (e.g., integrated coastal zone management, management ofreef ﬁsh, expansion of aquaculture), this simple technology isamong the adaptations with the greatest positive effect on foodsecurity (Supplementary Table 3).
3.2.2. Distributing small tuna and bycatch ofﬂoaded at regional ports
Transhipping of the catch from purse-seine vessels to cargovessels in port is mandated under regional tuna management
4
For a deﬁnition of nearshore FADs, see http://www.spc.int/DigitalLibrary/
Doc/FAME/Brochures/Anon_12_PolicyBrief19_FADs.pdf.

arrangements (Supplementary material). The ban on discarding
small tuna5 and their lower value for canning means that someindustrial ﬂeets ofﬂoad these ﬁsh at regional ports, providing a
local supply of low-cost ﬁsh. Much of the retained bycatch6 is alsoofﬂoaded.
3.2.3. Improving the distribution of canned tuna
Locally-canned tuna is a potential source of high-quality, nonperishable food for inland populations, provided it can be madeavailable at affordable prices. Improving access to canned tuna will
be particularly important for PNG, where the inland population
exceeds the combined population of all other PICTs and where
people have little animal protein in their diet [14].

5‘Small tuna’ includes skipjack, yellowﬁn and bigeye tuna caught by purseseine vessels of sizes which attract lower prices at canneries; discarding small tunahas been prohibited under Western and Central Paciﬁc Fisheries Commission
Conservation and Management Measures (CMM) 2009-02 and 2012-01.
6‘Bycatch’ includes non-target, edible pelagic ﬁsh caught by purse-seine andlongline ﬁshing vessels, e.g., rainbow runner, mahi–mahi, wahoo, certain sharks
and triggerﬁsh.

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J.D. Bell et al. / Marine Policy 51 (2015) 584–591

3.3. Priority actions, research and supporting policies
Urban

Tuna required(tonnes)

Fish needed(tonnes)Population (millions)

Rural

Providing better access to tuna for the people of the Paciﬁc, andmeasuring the effects of the recommended interventions on ﬁshconsumption and NCDs, will depend on the following actions,research and policies.
Assisting small-scale ﬁshers to catch tuna by expanding the useof nearshore FADs; including these FADs as part of the national
infrastructure for food security; and minimizing any negativeinteractions between artisanal/subsistence tuna ﬁsheries andindustrial ﬁshing ﬂeets. Investments in nearshore FADs will be
maximized by: mapping bathymetry to identify suitable sites;
monitoring catches to ﬁne-tune site selection and FAD design;
providing training in FAD ﬁshing techniques and catch handling;
harmonizing use of FADs within and between coastal communities; promoting simple post-harvest methods (smoking anddrying) to increase the shelf life of catches; and identifying andaddressing any issues preventing greater use of tuna by coastal
communities (Supplementary material).
The effectiveness of exclusion zones for industrial ﬁshing,which all PICTs have established around islands to help allocate
tuna to coastal communities, also needs to be examined. This
involves identifying the extent of industrial ﬁshing close to thesezones; monitoring the tuna catches of artisanal and subsistenceﬁshers to evaluate overlaps in catch composition and ﬁshing times
between industrial ﬂeets and small-scale ﬁsheries; assessing themixing of tuna from nearshore and offshore areas and, ultimately,
determining whether communities can catch enough tuna to meettheir needs (Supplementary material).
Facilitating the supply of low-cost ﬁsh to urban centers byextending the existing ban on discarding small tuna at sea byindustrial purse-seine ﬁshing ﬂeets to include bycatch. Harnessing
the potential ﬁsh supply from transhipping operations will involve
understanding the factors expected to progressively reduce thequantities of small tuna and bycatch landed by industrial ﬂeets,
e.g., the inconvenience to vessels of storing lower-value ﬁsh, andmanagement measures to reduce the use of drifting FADs in thepurse-seine ﬁshery (Supplementary material). The transient nature of transhipping activities at many ports due to the effects ofthe El Niño-Southern Oscillation on tuna distribution, and theremote locations of some transhipping ports, also pose challenges
for delivering ﬁsh regularly where it is needed most.

Fig. 1. Estimates of (A) the combined population of the 22 Paciﬁc Island countries
and territories, (B) quantities of ﬁsh needed for good nutrition in rural and urban
areas, and (C) the quantities of tuna required for food in 2013, 2020 and 2035. The
amount of tuna needed is also shown as a percentage of the total quantity of ﬁsh
required for food, and as a percentage (in brackets) of average annual regional tuna
catch between 2009 and 2013.

To help overcome these constraints, governments can monitor theavailability of small tuna and bycatch (Supplementary material) and
explore the use of national license conditions for foreign ﬁshing ﬂeets
to (1) specify the locations and minimum frequency of transhipments;(2) arrange for all foreign ﬂeets to ofﬂoad small tuna and bycatch; and(3) mandate landing of export-quality tuna at population centerswhen the quantities of small tuna and bycatch from transhipping are

Table 3
Estimates of the tuna needed to ﬁll the gap between the level of ﬁsh consumption recommended for good nutrition, or traditional levels of ﬁsh consumption, and the ﬁshavailable from coral reefs in 2013, 2020 and 2035; and the percentage of total annual average tuna catch (2009–2013) from the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of selected
Paciﬁc Island countries and territories (PICTs) (in bold). Estimates of tuna required for food in other groups of PICTs (see Supplementary material and footnotes) arealso shown.
PICT

Papua New Guinea
Solomon Islands
Kiribatid
Nauru
5 Other PICTs in Group 3e
7 PICTs in Group 2
6 PICTs in Group 1
Totala

Tuna needed for food (t)aAverage tuna catch (t)b

2013

2020

2035

0
0
4,250
470
1,530
5,590
870
12,71018,200
0
4,900
570
1,680
5,740
930
32,02063,200f
7,990
6,370
670
2,035
6,210
1,050
87,525

597,657
144,454
330,177
99,033
15,267
248,940
60,576
1,496,103

Percentage of average tuna catchc
2013

2020

2035

0
0
1.3
0.4
10.0
2.2
1.4
0.9

3.0
0
1.5
0.6
11.0
2.3
1.5
2.1

10.6
5.5
1.9
0.7
13.3
2.5
1.7
5.9

Derived from Table 2 and incorporates effects of climate change on coastal ﬁsheries production in 2035 [9].
Based on the 5-year average total tuna catch (all gear types) for the period 2009–2013, rounded to the nearest tonne.
Assumes that all tuna will come from industrial ﬁshing within the EEZ and does not allow for catches from nearshore FADs, the contribution of bycatch, or the effects ofclimate change on tuna catch [7].
dBased on the fact that tuna is already widely used for food in Kiribati due to the remote location of many reefs from the densely populated urban center on Tarawa,
estimate for 2013 is derived from Ref. [9] and extrapolated for population growth in 2020 and 2035.
eAcknowledges that even though these countries are in ﬁsh deﬁcit, access to tuna from offshore longline ﬁsheries will be minimal due to export of these ﬁsh and thatpurchasing power is relatively high in all other PICTs except Vanuatu and enables import (in principle) of alternative high-quality animal protein.
fAllows for freshwater pond aquaculture to supply 1 kg of ﬁsh per person per year by 2035 [11], reducing the overall deﬁcit in ﬁsh of 73,800 t (Table 2) to 63,200 t.
bc

J.D. Bell et al. / Marine Policy 51 (2015) 584–591

589

Fig. 2. Signed digraph model of factors affecting the use of ﬁsh for food security by coastal communities in Paciﬁc Island countries and territories. Light circles represent
major variables regulating delivery of protein from coastal ﬁsheries; dark circles represent some important drivers in the system and medium circles represent possible key
adaptations for food security. The two thin-lined links indicate that small-scale coastal ﬁshing effort has a negligible effect on the tuna stocks that comprise much of thenearshore pelagic ﬁshery.

low. Governments can also oversee transhipping operations to ensureﬁsh quality is maintained, and provide incentives for small businesses
to distribute the ﬁsh to peri-urban areas.
To the greatest extent possible, these actions should be implemented in ways that do not undermine the livelihoods of smallscale ﬁshers. Highlighting the differences in product quality
between the fresh tuna landed by artisanal ﬁsheries, and thebrined ﬁsh from purse-seine vessels, will be one way of helping
small-scale ﬁshers to maintain market share.
Reducing the cost of canned tuna by (1) investing some ﬁshinglicence revenue to help distribute canned tuna to inland areas;(2) exploring joint ventures with vertically integrated tuna companies to return the canned dark tuna meat preferred by many
Paciﬁc Islanders to the region rather than selling those products onother markets; and (3) using licence conditions for foreign ﬂeets toensure that local canneries receive the quantities of tuna needed
to operate efﬁciently.
Measuring success by using household income and expenditure
surveys (HIES) and censuses to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions to improve local access to tuna. HIES and censuses are
already being modiﬁed to collect data on per capita ﬁsh consumption in some PICTs (Supplementary material) and these changes
now need to be standardized and adopted across the region.
Demographic and health surveys can also be modiﬁed to measure
the effects of changes in tuna consumption on NCDs and obesity.
Effective implementation of these actions to increase access totuna for both rural and urban populations will also require
addressing the questions listed in Table 4.
3.4. Investments required to maintain tuna stocks
Optimising the socio-economic beneﬁts of tuna for rapidly
growing Paciﬁc Island populations depends not only on divertingsome tuna from export markets to meet local needs for nutitious
food to sustain public health, it also depends on maintaining
regional tuna stocks at robust levels and controlling the impacts ofindustrial ﬁshing on the availability of tuna for coastal communities. The current framework used to assess the status of theregion’s tuna stocks, MULTIFAN-CL7, integrates data on catch,effort, ﬁsh size and ﬁsh movement to model tuna abundance
7

www.multifan-cl.org.

and age structure within broad areas of the tropical Paciﬁc Ocean[16]. However, greater investments are needed to guide themanagement of industrial tuna ﬁsheries by the Western andCentral Paciﬁc Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). In particular,collection of logbook catch and effort data at ﬁner spatial
scales, and strengthening of observer programs, port sampling
and tuna tagging, are needed to provide better estimates of thestatus of tuna stocks and the impacts of ﬁshing. New technology,
such as satellite-based vessel monitoring systems and e-reporting,promise to provide better details of ﬁshing operations andenable ﬁshery monitoring in near real time. Such innovation is
expected to reduce model uncertainties, allowing greater
precision in the estimates of stock status against agreed reference
points.
Improvements to the ‘Spatial ecosystem and population dynamics’ (SEAPODYM) model [17], designed to investigate changes inthe structure of tuna populations at multiple scales, are alsoneeded to help determine how industrial tuna ﬁsheries affectsmall-scale ﬁsheries for tuna in nearshore areas. SEAPODYM is an
end-to-end model, incorporating parameters spanning the environment (temperature, currents, oxygen, and primary production)
through to tuna population dynamics, to tuna catches. It includes aforage (prey) sub-model describing the transfer of energy fromprimary production to tuna species through mid-trophic levels[18]. The model is driven by a bio-physical environment predictedfrom a coupled ocean physical-biogeochemical model. Predictedenvironmental habitats generated by the model integrate observations on seasonal, annual and decadal variation in oceanographic
processes acquired from satellites. Similarly, at the other end of
the model, assimilation of catch data from industrial ﬁsheries
allows optimizing and validating the predictions for tuna abundance and distribution [19].
To improve conﬁdence in forecasts by SEAPODYM, increased
observations are required to validate the model. For example, themore closely the resolution of the industrial ﬁsheries catch data
matches the resolution of the environmental data, the better thepredictive performance of SEAPODYM. Similarly, ﬁner resolution
environmental data will improve the model’s capability todescribe meso-scale variations in ocean habitats and skill at
predicting tuna distributions and abundance. While most ﬁsheries
and environmental data will come from industrial ﬂeets, improvements to the monitoring of tuna catches made by small-scaleﬁshers in coastal waters will also beneﬁt the model.

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J.D. Bell et al. / Marine Policy 51 (2015) 584–591

Table 4
Important questions to be answered during development of policies and research for effective implementation of the main interventions to increase access to tuna in ruraland urban areas.
Rural areas
What quantities of tuna and other large pelagic ﬁsh are being caught by small-scale coastal ﬁshers with and without the use of nearshore, anchored ﬁsh aggregating
devices?
Can sufﬁcient tuna be caught by subsistence and artisanal ﬁshers to meet existing and projected demands for ﬁsh, or is industrial ﬁshing affecting, or likely to affect,
tuna supply for coastal communities?
What is the demand by inland communities in Papua New Guinea for the range of canned tuna products from national canneries, and what is the optimum way of
packaging (e.g., can size, plastic packs) these products and distributing tuna to these communities?
Urban areas
What sampling and monitoring is required to determine the quantities of small tuna and bycatch available for ofﬂoading at regional ports by industrial ﬁshing ﬂeets?
What are the spatial patterns of tuna catches driven by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation relative to urban populations with the greatest needs for ﬁsh, and what are themost practical policies for delivering tuna to these populations given year-to-year spatial ﬂuctuations in the location of ﬁshing?
How are the quantities of small tuna and bycatch available for ofﬂoading at regional ports likely to be affected by the WCPFC conservation and management measures
to reduce the impacts of ﬁshing on bigeye tuna, and future measures to implement ecosystem-based approaches to ﬁsheries management?
Are incentives needed for small businesses to distribute small tuna and bycatch to peri-urban areas?
What are the operational implications, in terms of economic efﬁciency, for ﬁshing vessels of sending ﬁsh ashore during transhipping, and what licence conditions andincentives can governments use to increase the frequency of transhipping in their ports?
Which regulations are needed to harmonise sale of small tuna and bycatch from transhipping operations with catches of fresh tuna by local ﬁshers to reconcile
demand for low-cost ﬁsh with maintenance of livelihoods?
Could other forms of healthy animal protein be imported at the same price as higher-grade tuna purchased locally from industrial ﬂeets? Could plant sources of omega
3 oils and protein supplement those derived from tuna in larger island nations (e.g. Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands)?
When it is necessary to request purse-seine vessels to ofﬂoad high-quality tuna at regional ports for local consumption, how can ﬁshing companies be compensated forthe opportunity costs involved?

A weakness in the SEAPODYM approach is the scarcity of observations on mid-trophic level organisms (‘micronekton’) [20,21],
which limits validation of the forage population sub-model. The
paucity of micronekton observations is due to the diversity anddepth range (1200 m) of the organisms, and the costs involved insampling them with nets from ocean-going research vessels [20].
Collection of stomach contents from tuna and other top predators,
which are ‘biological samplers’ of micronekton, by the extensive
network of ‘at sea’ scientiﬁc observers on industrial ﬁshing vessels,
promises to increase ‘observations’ of mid-trophic level organisms[22,23]. Greater deployment of acoustic sounders on scientiﬁc,ﬁshing and commercial shipping vessels also has potential toestablish basin-scale monitoring programmes for micronekton[24,25].
Time series of micronekton observations are needed on larger
spatial scales to improve forecasts of tuna distribution andabundance by the SEAPODYM model, and to gain a better understanding of the impact of climate variability on the abundance anddistribution of mid-trophic level organisms and tuna [25–27].
Tagging data are also required to inform SEAPODYM about thedegree of exchange and mixing of tuna between nearshore andoffshore areas.

4. Conclusions
The revenue from ﬁshing licences ﬂowing into Paciﬁc Island
countries and territories may be a mixed blessing if any increase inpurchasing power exacerbates the incidence of noncommunicable diseases and obesity. On the other hand, diversifying the use of the region’s rich tuna resources to provide better
local access to ﬁsh for food promises to help improve the health of
Paciﬁc Island people. This goal needs to be included in regionaland national tuna management plans and supported by researchand policies to improve the availability of tuna for rapidly growing
rural and urban populations. Greater use of licence conditions toincrease local supplies of tuna, customised solutions for eachcountry and territory, and continued assessment, modelling andprecautionary management of the region’s tuna stocks will beessential.

Acknowledgements
The authors thank the AusAID Paciﬁc Fisheries for Food Security
Programme, the AusAID Climate Change Support Programme, the10th European Development Fund (Scientiﬁc Support to Coastal andOceanic Fisheries Management in the Western and Central Paciﬁc
Ocean), the French Paciﬁc Fund, the South Paciﬁc Integrated Observatory for Environment and Terrestrial and Marine Biodiversity andthe Dalio Foundation for supporting the various analyses in thisstudy and the preparation of the manuscript. Marea Hatziolos, Glen
Hurry, Robert Kearney, William Morrell, Garry Preston, Neroni Sladeand Meryl Williams kindly provided helpful comments on the text
and supplementary material.

Appendix A. Supporting information
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in
the online version at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2014.10.
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