Tuna, the economic mainstay of the Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS), are being driven out of the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of these vulnerable countries by ocean warming, says a new study.
The SIDS are among parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that are least responsible for changing climate but are most vulnerable, especially to sea levels rising from global warming.
Tuna stocks earn the Pacific SIDS access fees paid by foreign fleets that catch 1.4 million tonnes of tuna from the combined EEZs of the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.
According to the study, published late July in Nature Sustainability, by 2050, under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, the total biomass of three tuna species in the waters of the Pacific SIDS could decline by an average of 13 per cent as fish move into international waters.
The sustainable management of the world’s largest tuna fishery located in the Pacific SIDS will also be affected as the fish move into international waters, the researchers say.
Pascal Bach, researcher at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, in Marseilles, France, says that 90 per cent of the tuna caught in the EEZs of the 10 Pacific SIDS is exported to canneries in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
The remaining 10 per cent is processed in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Samoa at factories that employ some 15,000 people.
