Pacific tuna fisheries should benefit Pacific more
Monday 28 May 2007, 12:24PM
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Fisheries are rapidly becoming a vitally important economic sector
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Opening of the 2007 annual meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee, Te Papa, Wellington
I know many of you have travelled considerable distances to be here today. So it's my pleasure to welcome you to New Zealand.
The building in which we are meeting - Te Papa - is our national museum, and we call it 'Our Place'. I hope you get the chance to have a look around here. There are many treasures that scientists and researchers are working on here. Te Papa holds our national reference collection of fish - it has around 150 thousand specimens preserved in alcohol in jars.
One of them - NOT in a preserving jar! - is a colossal squid, which was caught earlier this year. It's a staggering fourteen metres long. When it was caught it was probably the first intact adult colossal squid ever landed. I came down here when it arrived and I can assure you it's both a majestic and hideous creature. It's bigger than a giant squid and it has sharp, swivelling hooks in the tips of its tentacles, so scientists reckon it is a very aggressive hunter. It would gobble up something the size of one of us for lunch. It's an important find for science because colossal squid are so rarely caught and we don't know much about them.
It's also fascinating because it confirms that even now, when we think we know so much about the surface of the world, there really are monsters in the deep ocean as mysterious as our mythology says.
It's interesting that virtually all of us who come from fishing countries and cultures have our own stories and myths about the sea. We tell those stories because of the vital role the sea plays in our history and in our ongoing development. For example, here in New Zealand a Maori story tells how our North Island was a fish caught by Maui, who was standing on the South Island at the time. Wellington here is the head of the fish.
We all have stories like this - stories of our relationship to the sea and about the fish we take from it. And those stories highlight that, in the sea, we have a common heritage. It's an experience we share in common.
For all of us here, our fisheries are a vital resource. They are a cultural resource. They are also an economic resource. Here in New Zealand, fisheries are rapidly becoming a vitally important economic sector.
Our fish are a part of our lifestyle and always have been. Every year a million of us go fishing for fun and a feed. Many of the species we fish for tie us closely into our neighbours and partners in this organisation.
Our fresh water eels are one example. Most of us think they live in the river. But I had the pleasure of opening a new research facility at one of our tertiary education institutions last week. This facility north of Auckland has a world-class eel research centre. And I discovered that our eels have a fascinating life cycle as a highly migratory species.
In the early years they get fat in our rivers and lakes. Then at the end of the summer fully-grown adults wriggle down to the sea and then swim north. They travel far into the Pacific. And when they reach Tonga, they spawn.
So kia ora to our friends from Tonga. I hope you enjoy those eels when they make it to your waters to spawn - they have been well looked after. The newly hatched eels drift in the ocean currents all the way back to New Zealand. For many millions of years New Zealanders have been migrating to Tonga and, eventually,their off-spring returned home again!
There are many fish swimming in our waters, and another migratory species we have long caught and enjoyed is the mighty tuna. (Ironically, the Maori word for eel is "tuna.")
For all of us here today, tuna has always been an important food source. In recent years we have learned that tuna fish that swim around our islands also swim between the islands. We share the same stocks. And our stocks are probably the only remaining healthy tuna stocks left on the planet.
It didn't take long for others from outside the region to recognise this. We saw the arrival of industrialised distant fishing nations eager to fish for our abundant tuna resources. This forced us to a change the way we thought about our fisheries resources and it has the potential to impact on our communities.
We can be grateful for the wisdom of our leaders twenty-six years ago when they had the vision to begin managing our fisheries issues in a partnership, by co-operating and working closely together. The Fisheries Forum Agency was created out of that vision and the Secretariat was established.
We have worked well together since that time, and have achieved a lot.
Together we are conserving, managing, and protecting the common tuna resources that migrate within and between our zones.
We are doing so on behalf of our communities, as generations have done for many centuries before us. And as they managed the resource for us, so too we are custodians of the future, entrusted with the care and guardianship of tomorrow's resources. We are being entrusted with one of the most important economic, social and cultural treasures of each of our communities.
Pacific tuna fisheries are worth two billion US dollars each year. Not much of that value is taken by vessels based in Pacific countries. I want to make it clear I hope to see us enjoying a greater share of the economic resources that flow from this resource.
And I also hope this conference will focus on the need for close monitoring and management to ensure our tuna do not become over-fished. After all, it is not possible to achieve lasting economic benefits from the resource unless it is sustained.
So we have a job to do to ensure it remains sustainable. That's why the work we will do this week is valuable. It is the work of fostering and nurturing the future. No one will thank us if we allow the riches we enjoy today to be squandered and consumed at the expense of our children and their grandchildren.
I will speak to you again this week, so I will have a few comments on these issues along the way. But for now I wish you all the very best as you do your valuable work at this conference.
---------------------------------
Opening of the 2007 annual meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee, Te Papa, Wellington
I know many of you have travelled considerable distances to be here today. So it's my pleasure to welcome you to New Zealand.
The building in which we are meeting - Te Papa - is our national museum, and we call it 'Our Place'. I hope you get the chance to have a look around here. There are many treasures that scientists and researchers are working on here. Te Papa holds our national reference collection of fish - it has around 150 thousand specimens preserved in alcohol in jars.
One of them - NOT in a preserving jar! - is a colossal squid, which was caught earlier this year. It's a staggering fourteen metres long. When it was caught it was probably the first intact adult colossal squid ever landed. I came down here when it arrived and I can assure you it's both a majestic and hideous creature. It's bigger than a giant squid and it has sharp, swivelling hooks in the tips of its tentacles, so scientists reckon it is a very aggressive hunter. It would gobble up something the size of one of us for lunch. It's an important find for science because colossal squid are so rarely caught and we don't know much about them.
It's also fascinating because it confirms that even now, when we think we know so much about the surface of the world, there really are monsters in the deep ocean as mysterious as our mythology says.
It's interesting that virtually all of us who come from fishing countries and cultures have our own stories and myths about the sea. We tell those stories because of the vital role the sea plays in our history and in our ongoing development. For example, here in New Zealand a Maori story tells how our North Island was a fish caught by Maui, who was standing on the South Island at the time. Wellington here is the head of the fish.
We all have stories like this - stories of our relationship to the sea and about the fish we take from it. And those stories highlight that, in the sea, we have a common heritage. It's an experience we share in common.
For all of us here, our fisheries are a vital resource. They are a cultural resource. They are also an economic resource. Here in New Zealand, fisheries are rapidly becoming a vitally important economic sector.
Our fish are a part of our lifestyle and always have been. Every year a million of us go fishing for fun and a feed. Many of the species we fish for tie us closely into our neighbours and partners in this organisation.
Our fresh water eels are one example. Most of us think they live in the river. But I had the pleasure of opening a new research facility at one of our tertiary education institutions last week. This facility north of Auckland has a world-class eel research centre. And I discovered that our eels have a fascinating life cycle as a highly migratory species.
In the early years they get fat in our rivers and lakes. Then at the end of the summer fully-grown adults wriggle down to the sea and then swim north. They travel far into the Pacific. And when they reach Tonga, they spawn.
So kia ora to our friends from Tonga. I hope you enjoy those eels when they make it to your waters to spawn - they have been well looked after. The newly hatched eels drift in the ocean currents all the way back to New Zealand. For many millions of years New Zealanders have been migrating to Tonga and, eventually,their off-spring returned home again!
There are many fish swimming in our waters, and another migratory species we have long caught and enjoyed is the mighty tuna. (Ironically, the Maori word for eel is "tuna.")
For all of us here today, tuna has always been an important food source. In recent years we have learned that tuna fish that swim around our islands also swim between the islands. We share the same stocks. And our stocks are probably the only remaining healthy tuna stocks left on the planet.
It didn't take long for others from outside the region to recognise this. We saw the arrival of industrialised distant fishing nations eager to fish for our abundant tuna resources. This forced us to a change the way we thought about our fisheries resources and it has the potential to impact on our communities.
We can be grateful for the wisdom of our leaders twenty-six years ago when they had the vision to begin managing our fisheries issues in a partnership, by co-operating and working closely together. The Fisheries Forum Agency was created out of that vision and the Secretariat was established.
We have worked well together since that time, and have achieved a lot.
Together we are conserving, managing, and protecting the common tuna resources that migrate within and between our zones.
We are doing so on behalf of our communities, as generations have done for many centuries before us. And as they managed the resource for us, so too we are custodians of the future, entrusted with the care and guardianship of tomorrow's resources. We are being entrusted with one of the most important economic, social and cultural treasures of each of our communities.
Pacific tuna fisheries are worth two billion US dollars each year. Not much of that value is taken by vessels based in Pacific countries. I want to make it clear I hope to see us enjoying a greater share of the economic resources that flow from this resource.
And I also hope this conference will focus on the need for close monitoring and management to ensure our tuna do not become over-fished. After all, it is not possible to achieve lasting economic benefits from the resource unless it is sustained.
So we have a job to do to ensure it remains sustainable. That's why the work we will do this week is valuable. It is the work of fostering and nurturing the future. No one will thank us if we allow the riches we enjoy today to be squandered and consumed at the expense of our children and their grandchildren.
I will speak to you again this week, so I will have a few comments on these issues along the way. But for now I wish you all the very best as you do your valuable work at this conference.