Proceedings of the Fourth International Fishers Forum
The Fourth International Fishers Forum (IFF4) was held from 12-14 November 2007 in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council and Instituto Costarricense de Pesca y Acuicultura (Costa Rica Fisheries and Aquaculture Institute) were the conference co-hosts. Technical assistance for program development and convening the conference was provided by staff from IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission and the World Wide Fund for Nature.
After three days of very intensive sessions and discussions I believe that we have had a very successful meeting. The breadth and scale of this Fishers Forum has been the most ambitious yet. This international meeting of 250 fishermen, management authorities, seafood industry and retailers, fishing technology experts, marine ecologists and fisheries scientists resulted in the active exchange of wide-ranging perspectives and approaches for responsible longline and gillnet fisheries, including to minimize sea turtle, seabird, and marine mammal incidental catch, and ensure that sharks and their relatives receive needed protection. Forum participants took an honest look at the state of our artisanal and industrial fisheries, exchanged ideas on how to improve them and committed to concrete follow-up actions.
On Day 1, following the opening ceremony and welcomes, the stage was set in the afternoon by presentations on the global tuna industry and then on issues related to longline fisheries in Central and South America, Hawaii, Fiji and the Pacific Islands and Indonesia. It is clear from these different presentations that longline fishing is not getting any easier and that serious challenges lie ahead to maintain the continuity of these fisheries.
The fisheries of Central and South America do not exist in mutual isolation, and there are a number of regional and sub-regional institutional arrangements that were reviewed by this forum, which considered the relationships between locally managed small scale domestic pelagic fisheries and larger fisheries on the high seas in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The final sessions on Day 1 considered a new and exciting topic for the forum series, namely the issue of protected species interactions in gillnets. This was a very welcome development, and I hope that participants were encouraged that there are solutions to gillnet bycatch that can be implemented with the active collaboration of fishing communities.
The morning of Day 2 elaborated on the theme of fisheries sustainability and regional cooperation. This included separate sessions by industrial and artisanal fishers to discuss what they felt were best ways to achieve sustainable livelihoods for both sectors. In the industrial panel there were issues about resource allocation between purse seiners and longliners, the canned tuna and sashimi markets, large and small longliners and coastal states and distant water fishing states. There was also discussion on fishing capacity, technological developments, ecosystem approach to fisheries management and compliance, an issue that appears to be getting worse not better among the tuna regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs).
In the artisanal session there was discussion about the development of a new regional or international artisanal fishery organization for small scale tuna fishers. This new organization would be charged with defining the extent of the small scale fishermen participation in tuna fisheries. This group also discussed the development of a wide ranging education program to promote global awareness of artisanal fishing, information exchange, especially on bycatch mitigation technology and resource management information. There was also consideration of adopting a Code of Conduct for Artisanal Fishers.
The afternoon of Day 2 was what I personally consider the core of the IFF series, namely the technical sessi