ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

Intro music- WAVES EMILY MUSIC  

TEASER QUOTE:

Paul

It’s important, because we provide a forum for all the different countries to be able to come together and negotiate on an on an even footing, to ensure that their voices are heard .

Doreen

Small scale fisheries is the cornerstone of livelihoods, nutrition and economic growth, and we know that they provide employment for millions of people and significantly contribute to household, local and national economies.

Umair

Because tuna is not just a fish which you eat out of a can, and It’s, it’s more than that.

SCRIPT

Jennifer: Hello, and welcome to NEGOTIATING THE OCEAN – an Ocean Equity podcast by the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security – ANCORS at the University of Wollongong.

I’m Jennifer Macey

Bianca: And I’m Bianca Haas

Jennifer: Last episode, Part 1 of tuna fisheries we took a deep dive into the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.

This episode we’re heading to the Indian Ocean, where the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission has just wrapped up their 29^th annual meeting in La Reunion, France, at the time of this recording.

Bianca: And I had the great opportunity to attend this meeting.

The Indian Ocean is the second most lucrative ocean for tuna – it’s big business.

And the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission – IOTC, is responsible for the management of this fishery.  

Jennifer: Today we’re going to talk about some of the equity issues faced by Small Island Developing States, and small-scale fisheries from those countries fishing in the Indian Ocean.

 So, Bianca what are the similarities and differences between the Indian Ocean and the Western and Central Pacific Ocean?

Are there similar problems and equity issues?

Bianca: Yes and No. Every region is unique. As we talked about in the previous episode, Pacific Island states play a critical role in shaping fisheries management.

Yet, in the Indian Ocean, the Small Island States are less powerful, and other issues like small-scale fisheries are more pronounced.

Jennifer: To help us unpack that a little bit more we spoke to Adam Ziyad, the Director General for Fisheries in the Maldives.

He’s the current Chair of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, and a PhD student here at ANCORS.

Ziyad:

I am Adam Ziad. I joined the Ministry of Fisheries around 2006 I joined as a junior staff have held various posts within the Ministry, but most recently, and right now, I’m the DG for fisheries.

For many foreigners. Maldives is actually sort of synonymous with tourism. So the white sandy beaches, the coral reefs, etc. But for Maldivians, fishing has always been big. Before the establishment of industrial fisheries in the Indian Ocean, Maldives actually accounted for more than a quarter of the total two other endings in the Indian Ocean. So historically even, we’ve had a big sort of fishing in the Indian Ocean. Big stake in the Indian Ocean, fisheries before tourism took over, fisheries in the country, fishing was the mainstay of the economy. It used to be the biggest source of employment in the country, and it still employs about 10 to 15% of the total labor force, and most of it Maldivians. Tourism would now be the biggest employment sector, but many of it would be foreigners expat workers. So fishing is still quite important for the country. We are also the highest per capita fish consuming country globally. And fishing, I would say, is part of the culture and the everyday life of Maldives, we still consume tuna in one of our daily meals, if not in all three meals. So breakfast, lunch, dinner, there’ll be some sort of tuna which is part of our so it’s very much ingrained in our lifestyle, in our culture. 

Bianca: As we heard from Adam Ziyad, fisheries are essential for the livelihood of coastal states, especially small island developing states like the Maldives.

Jennifer:  But Bianca, a lot of these developing countries don’t have a lot of resources or infrastructure to go out in boats and monitor and check for illegal fishing activity, compliance, or unsustainable fishing practices, compared to some of their bigger fishing nations?

Bianca: No – and that lack of capacity is something that is often talked about at the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission and is a big concern for Dr Paul de Bruyn the executive secretary for the IOTC, based in the Seychelles

Paul

My name is Paul de Bruyn. I’m the Executive Secretary of the Indian Ocean tuna commission. So basically, my role is to provide strategic leadership and oversight. I’m supposed to be ensuring the Commission’s objectives are effectively met, basically. So, I manage and lead a team of very dedicated people working at the secretariat.

It’s important, because we provide a forum for all the different countries to be able to come together and negotiate on an on an even footing, to ensure that their voices are heard and that they have sound input into the management of these stocks, which are trans boundary and pelagic stocks in many cases.

So you know, the first thing about the iotc is the Indian Ocean region is rimmed by generally developing countries and a lot of small island developing states. So there is a capacity issue that that comes into play here. You know, we don’t have, for example, the Atlantic, where you’ve got the US on the one side, you’ve got Europe on the other. You’ve got these, these countries and blocks which have a huge capacity for surveillance and monitoring. They have large infrastructure for scientific advice. They’ve got a lot of benefits in that respect. Whereas the iotc, it’s largely developing countries. So you know that that that has challenges in terms of of monitoring, control and surveillance. Of course there’s, there’s limited capacity to do that. There’s fairly limited scientific capacity as well. So, the Secretariat has to provide strong services in that respect, and ensure we have consultants and external experts to help. And again, you know, the small island developing state issue, where there’s, you know, these countries which are heavily reliant on fisheries and have very different priorities in terms of their national interests. Than, for example, a distant water fleet which has a very diverse economy might have. So I think that that’s, you know, those are some of the very unique challenges we have.

Jennifer – That was Dr Paul de Bruyn, The Executive Secretary of the Indian Ocean tuna commission. So Bianca what are some of the concerns around equity for delegates from these smaller developing countries? How do they engage in these fisheries organisations in a way that’s both fair and effective?

BIANCA – that’s a question we put to Adam Ziad the current Chair of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission.

Ziyad

For outsiders, an rfmo might look as just a commission meeting, but there’s a lot of side meetings, working parties, other subsidiary bodies that you have to engage in meaningfully in the run up to the commission and throughout the year. So that’s that takes a big chunk of our time, the regional engagement.

But yeah, and maybe one of the other things that people know and often overlook is, well, we don’t have that sort of, as small countries we don’t have that sort of diplomatic pull that other that other bigger nations might have. We don’t have the presence of embassies in our countries. And often when you have these engagements, it’s important to have these bilateral diplomatic discussions as well, to put forward your views, to put forward your agenda, and sort of have a bargain in power. We SIDS. We don’t usually have that. So that’s that’s a major advantage that, I must say, that the other bigger countries would have when they are engaging in the RFMO. In the iotc, like I said, we’ve got, we’ve got four SIDS. And then we only four members out of 28 or member countries. So our voices can can often be sort of minimal in the overall context of the discussions. So we often have to be loud if we are to get our voice across, if we are to get our points across and that’s not always easy in this multilateral fora discussions.

JENNIFER: That was Adam Ziyad from the Maldives.  So, we’ve heard a lot about the general management of fisheries in the Indian Ocean. Do they just talk about managing Tuna stock for fisheries at these meeting?

BIANCA – No these regional management organisations also include the management of associated species such as sharks, turtles, or whales.

Umair Shahid from Pakistan is from the conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature or WWF. He attends the meetings of the IOTC as an observer.

Umair

My name is Umair Shahid, and I’m working as the Indian Ocean tuna manager for WWF. It’s been five years and counting since I’ve been in this regional role of working with the IOTC member states on tuna and bycatch. So my main job function is to push policy measures for tuna conservation and to improve bycatch management in the Indian Ocean, and to also improve the nexus of data from small scale fisheries.

So wherever you have wherever you will have a target species, you will have a bycatch species, species that are caught in association with the target fishery, and those could hold high value and still become considered as commercially important, while some may not hold contact commercial value and could be unwanted species and may be discarded at sea or if brought and landed in ports, they do not fetch the same price, or do not, are not equal to the same value as I mentioned, in terms of the economics. But there is definitely a lot of importance from a coastal country perspective, and from a Social Security socio economic perspective, for bycatch species to be managed, for instance, sharks, in the case of the tuna fisheries, because there is a large association of shark catches with target tuna fisheries, and they could be off different nature.

In my opinion, since I started working on tuna fisheries and bycatch issues, I see that there is considerable gap in terms of data. So, if you don’t have good quality data, you’re not able to improve the management and cannot take informed decisions. In this context, a lot of the current conservation and management measures that are related to shark species or bycatch species, including sea turtles or dolphins and whales are quite old, and they’re almost, you know, adopted about a decade ago, and they’re largely focused on industrial fishing vessels, while the problems remains with small scale fisheries, as well as With gill net fisheries, which is one of the most deleterious gears operating in the Indian Ocean.

JENNIFER: That was Umair Shahid the Indian Ocean Tuna Manager for WWF.

Bianca: Many of the issues raised so far all point to the lack of data especially for small-scale fisheries.

JENNIFER – What exactly are small-scale fishers?

BIANCA – Good question Small-scale fishers are people who fish close to the shore and mostly use traditional gear to catch fish.

JENNIFER: But surely they don’t have the resources to go to these meetings?

BIANCA: Exactly, so an NGO network goes on their behalf. It’s called the Southwest Indian Ocean Tuna Forum or SWIOTUNA–  and is based in Kenya.

The Coordinator of SWIOTUNA is Doreen Simiyu and we asked her about the specific challenges for small scale fisheries.

Doreen

My name is Doreen Simiyu. I’m from Nairobi, Kenya, currently coordinating a network on marine and fisheries called southwest Indian Ocean tuna forum, abbreviated as SWIOTUNA.

So when it comes to small scale fisheries, especially in the southwest Indian Ocean, there’s no, I can say, standard definition that is there to define small scale fishers. Or rather, there’s no universal definition. But usually, when you talk about small scale fishers, is that mostly the work that they do is grounded in traditional values and knowledge that was passed on from their forefathers.

If you look globally, small scale fishers play a very important role in the most of the countries, including the countries in southwest Indian Ocean, where I am from, small scale fisheries is the cornerstone of livelihoods, nutrition and economic growth, and we know that they provide employment for millions of people and significantly contribute to household, local and national economies. So for instance, if you see like Tanzania, small scale fisheries account for over 95% of National Fish production. If you take the example of Mozambique, artisanal fisheries, is the most important sub sector, providing for over 90% of total fisheries production. So they are very important.

Are they well represented in existing management frameworks? I can say that representation is limited, but it’s very evolving at regional level. For instance, when you talk about the Indian Ocean tuna commission. I know they’re not so much represented, but there’s an opportunity for representation through observer status. If you look at national and local level, they’re represented through co management approaches. For instance, in Kenya and Tanzania, we talk about beach management units.

We also have a problem when it comes to data. Most of them do not provide data yet we know they are data holders. So And that is because probably there’s no incentive for them to provide that data. So many a times you’ll find them maybe under reporting and not giving accurate data. And there’s also that limited I can say cost effect relationship for them to understand that if you give this data, this data will inform decision making in the fisheries sector, so they are not able to connect. Why should they give data, and how does it help at national level, and how does it help at regional level when it comes to allocation? So there’s that disconnect.

We also have an issue to do with gender inequality. We know that women play a very significant role in fisheries, but their role is not seen. It’s hidden, and we know that in most countries there are cultural barriers that inhibit the women from actively participating in fisheries governance and fisheries leadership and fisheries decision making, and that that that is all attributed to the cultural and the context in which the communities live.

JENNIFER- That was Doreen Simiyu from Kenya. She is the network coordinating of the southwest Indian Ocean tuna forum, or SWIOTUNA.

Bianca: So far we’ve heard about the importance of looking beyond industrial fisheries and looking into the better management of other species like sharks or turtles – but also how to include the voices of small-scale fisheries.  

We also asked our guests in this episode the same question about the future.

What does the future hold especially in the face of increased uncertainties like climate change?

Paul

Climate change is a huge concern. Of course. It’s a very difficult one to address, because knowing exactly how the climate will affect the tuna stocks can be very tricky to forecast. At IOTC, there’s, there hasn’t been, probably as much research done on the effects of potential climate change, simply, again, for some of the reasons I mentioned earlier about capacity limitations. But we’ve been fortunate to be able to liaise with our other tuna, with our other tuna, RFMOs and for example, the Western central Pacific Fisheries Commission have done quite a lot of work on this, and they’ve even done some models where they’ve extended some of the simulations into the Indian Ocean. And so we’re trying to liaise with them and get them, hopefully, to do some presentations at some of our upcoming meetings, and to provide some feedback on potential impacts of climate change might have on Indian Ocean tuna stocks.

Umair

I think, you know, it’s not going to happen overnight one and it’s not going to happen, or at least, you know, in the in the short term, it’s a more long term approach that I’m thinking, that the members would take in the Indian Ocean, and that would help improve and prioritize conservation for these species. We’re already beginning to see a really strong push on sharks.

Because tuna is not just a fish which you eat out of a can, and It’s, it’s more than that. It’s, you know, for someone in a country like Somalia or Africa in, for instance, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, it’s more about food security, and it’s more about the sustainability of the employment, the livelihoods, of 1000s, 1000s and 1000s of people who live around the coastline.

Jennifer: Our podcast, Negotiating the Ocean, looks at lots of different meetings that govern the ocean, that happen around the world. So, are there ever opportunities where these meetings overlap or are there linkages between different negotiations and different agreements?

Bianca: Definitely. As we have heard at the last episode, these regional agreements are just one piece of the puzzle that make up the myriads of agreements governing the ocean.

Jennifer: So, Bianca are there opportunities then for these agreements to overlap or link in some way? And what does that mean for the new ocean treaty – the Agreement for Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, the BBNJ Agreement? Can RFMOs take part in that process?

BIANCA: Yes, absolutely. Dr Paul de Bruyn stresses that RFMOs have to be part of that conversation.

Paul

RFMOs need to be involved in that process. They don’t want to be on the outside looking in, being, you know, passively told how they need to fit into this process. They need to be actively involved, ensuring that the process is compatible with what we’re doing and that and that the vast experience that the RFMOS have is passed back to the BBNJ. Because a lot of the discussions are on international collaborations and regional collaborations, and we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. The rfmos had that experience already. It might not have been perfect, but there is sound management, there is a lot of expertise, and there needs to be this constant communication and collaboration. So, you know, rather than seeing it as a threat, as something that’s going impact on the rfmos, I see it as a great challenge. It really will close a lot of the loopholes in high seas management, which, you know, the tuner for most focus on tuna fisheries, but there’s a lot more going on at oceans that are affecting fish populations, be it deep sea mining or drilling or, you know, fishing or shipping or things like that, and the bbnj provides the framework for all of these marine use activities to be considered together to reduce their impact and ensure the sustainability. So that’s just one thing I wanted to touch on, because the bbnj, for me, is something that that’s very important at the moment and a big issue, and I think it’s something that people should be aware of, and it’s, it’s something that we’re looking forward to being involved in in the future. 

Jennifer: That was Dr Paul de Bruyn from the IOTC. The IOTC has just finished its 29^th annual meeting, and Bianca you have just come back from there. So what happened?

Bianca: It was quite exciting. So, with 29 proposals member states of the IOTC had a very busy agenda, with key areas covering shark conservation, transhipment, and catch limits for bigeye and skipjack tuna.

One of the big achievements of this year’s meeting was the adoption of a new shark measures, after several years of negotiations.

Jennifer: Oh what’s that?

Bianca: This new shark conservation measure merged five existing measures and addresses the issue of shark finning – where sharks are caught, their fins cut off and in most cases they are just thrown back in the water to die. Now, the IOTC has agree that all sharks that are caught need to have the fins attached. Additionally, there are also new provisions to  reduce the bycatch of shark species.  

Jennifer: So, it was a good meeting?

Bianca: Yes, the meeting was productive and important issues were addressed. If you want to learn more about the 29^th IOTC meeting, go to the show notes where you will find a link to the blog summarising this meeting.

Jennifer: It is such a complex net of management agreements and meetings to manage fisheries in different oceans. And the issues are so multi-faceted covering things like equity for small island developing states, small-scale fishers, and the management of other marine life like sharks, turtles, and whales.

Bianca:  Yes, and these two episodes have only been a small peek into a big and really complex system.

So thank you to our guest for illuminating a small part of it.

JENNIFER – thank you to:

Doreen Simiyu from Nairobi, Kenya, the network coordinator for the southwest Indian Ocean tuna forum, otherwise known as SWIOTUNA.

Umair Shahid the Indian Ocean Tuna Manager for WWF.

Adam Ziyad from the Maldives the Chair of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission

And Dr Paul de Bruyn, The Executive Secretary of the Indian Ocean tuna commission

Jennifer:  We will put links to the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, WWF and SWIOTUNA in the podcast shownotes.

There you’ll also find great links to more research and resources from the ANCORS Ocean Equity Team including blog posts from all the latest meetings.

We’d love to hear from you so please send any comments or feedback to inatvw@uow.edu.au.

Sound design and editing by Emily Perkins and Communication is by Sunnefa Yeatman SOON-eva YJET-man

Bianca: Thank you to ANCORS and the Nippon Foundation for their support in making this podcast.

Next episode we’re heading off to a completely different ocean activity – deep-sea mining.

JENNIFER subscribe now so you don’t miss an episode and if you think the information is useful be sure to share it with your networks.

 I’m Jennifer Macey.

Bianca:  And I’m Bianca Haas. Thanks for listing!

“Sea” you next time!

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