It's getting harder to compete Watch out for super seiners. These are the large purse seiner fishing boats that distribute long nets in a circular pattern to catch an entire school. The super seiner is usually more than 70m long. Equipped with major freezing and storage facilities, it is capable of extended transoceanic voyages to harvest fish. These huge ships that now fish the Pacific can take up to 11,000 tonnes of tuna a year - twice as much as the old fishing vessels. One Taiwanese vessel can take 20,000 tonnes in a year. That's 60 tonnes for every day of the year! And it's getting harder for local fishers using traditional methods to compete. For example, in Nuie, a fleet of small aluminium boats and outrigger canoes caught an estimated 100 tonnes of the main tuna species for the whole of 2003 - a super seiner would catch this much fish in just 2 days.

In the global race to catch as many fish as possible, the traditional fishers of the Pacific and the methods they use are being overtaken by large industrial fleets from foreign nations.

With sophisticated and industrial scale technology at their disposal, these vessels can find, catch, and store huge amounts of fish.

Profits from the Pacific fishing industry have been lost overseas; Pacific nations get only 5% of the profits from the tuna fishing industry.

Who makes the money from Pacific Tuna?
95% of the profits from the tuna fisheries go to "distant water fishing nations" or DWFNs, such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, USA, Phillipines, and the European Union.

Many Pacific island nations rely on income from access fees paid by foreign fishing vessels. Economic return for the annual tuna catch in 2001 was equivalent to 11% of the combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of all countries in the region.

What is a distant water fishing nation?
A DWFN is a nation that has boats fishing a long distance from home. Often this happens when that nation has over-fished its own waters.

How are fish caught?
Three main methods are used to catch tuna: purse seine nets, long-lines, and pole and line. Purse seining is responsible for more than two thirds of the catch in the Western and Central Pacific.

Catch (in mega tonnes*) of Albacore, Bigeye, Skipjack and Yellowfin in the Western Central Pacific Ocean, by longline, pole-and-line, purse seine and other gear types.
*1mt = 1000 tonnes

How does a purse seiner work?
Once the school of fish is found, a powerful smaller boat with one end of a massive net is launched off the seiner (the big fishing vessel). The seiner then circles the school with the net returning to the small boat. The net is drawn tight or 'pursed' at the base and hauled alongside. This method nets marine life indiscriminately.

What is a longliner?
A longliner lays fishing lines of up to 100km in length with up to 3000 baited hooks which hang at different depths. Many species of fish, turtles and birdlife are baited and caught accidentally. About 8% of Pacific tuna is caught this way.

Case study: Fisherman Ieremia Ekueta has been fishing the waters of Kiribati for more than 20 years. When he started in the early 1980s he says there were more and larger fish. Even large Blue Fin Tuna, up to 100 pounds, were easy to catch. Now he has to go 20miles further out to sea, and he only catches individual small tuna, instead of schools. "Big Eye tuna is very hard to catch now, we used to catch whole schools of Big Eye. Now they only come in ones and twos." Iremia is very concerned that the whole year is now open for fishing - "there used to be a rest period between May and the end of July - no-one would fish in this period. Now fishing happens all year round."

Quote: "I don't think we should have vessels from 5,000 miles away fishing here. Why are they fishing here? Because they have stuffed their own region and now they are coming down here to do it. We've got purse seiners from the European Union fishing in Kiribati. Why should they be down here? What have they done to their own? And who's next?" Captain David Lucas, Manager Solander Pacific, Fiji