A decade ago, Gregory Stone and a group of coral reef ecologists suggested to Kiribati’s leadership that the long-ignored Phoenix Islands were a treasure that could bring the country prestige and tourism as a world-class marine protected area.
But President Anote Tong said closing it to commercial tuna fishing would cost Kiribati millions of dollars that would have to be compensated by creating a trust fund.
Rashid Sumaila, a fisheries economist at UBC, says Kiribati should use the next decade or two it has before sea level rise becomes a big problem to build up its own fleet of purse seiners, or at least create joint ventures with foreign operators, keeping a far greater share of the fish’s value.
Namibia, he pointed out, forbids the kind of arrangements that Kiribati makes with foreign fleets. It allows only home-based fishing fleets to operate in its rich waters and mandates that a large portion of the catch be processed locally.
Read the full article from Islands Business.