Tuna fishing in Lankan waters:

Foreign poaching increases

Chamikara Weerasinghe

The National Aquatic Resources Development and Research Agency (NARA) Marine Biological Resources Division yesterday warned against increased poaching attempts by foreign fishing vessels entering into Sri Lankan waters to exploit tuna with tuna resources declining in the Indian ocean.

NARA’s Marine Biological Resources Division (MBRD) Head Dr Sisira Haputhanthri said fishing vessels from EU countries with purse seines and ring nets operating from Seychelles and fishing vessels from Thailand and Maldives are eyeing Sri Lankan waters to exploit tuna as the resource is abundantly available in Sri Lankan seas compared to theirs.

The reason for this is over fishing and Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Indian Ocean. The activities are threatening to destock tropical tuna in the region.

None can ever know the true scale of IUU fishing . It has heavily impacted on the Indian Ocean, NARA marine biologists said. Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) Executive Secretary Alejandro Angan- uzzi said they had large catches of tropical tuna between 2002 and 2005 but this has dropped sharply in the following years to date. Apart from tropical tunas, other types of tunas such as yellowfin, skipjack and big eye are also dwindling in numbers, Anganuzzi said.

As pointed out by MBRD scientists, exploiting of tuna by foreign vessels do not affect the current production of tuna which is at 180, 200 metric tonnes per year. “If we were unable to prevent IUU fishing that take place in our legitimate fishing grounds, it is going to afflict the local tuna industry in the long run.”

Fisheries Minister Rajitha Senaratna said the ministry has stepped up action to increase the country’s fish production by 10 percent by 2012 by rising from coastal fishing to off-shore deep sea fishing.

Minister Senaratna said he plans to increase the fleet of long-liners to catch more tuna from coastal fishing and offshore fishing.

Asked from MBRD officials how they plan to monitor IUU fishing in Sri Lankan waters and protect tuna from being exploited by foreign fishermen, they said the number of incidents could be minimized once the Ministry has installed a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS).