Nauru bans transhipments to tackle overfishing in wake of Greenpeace bust

The Nauru government has banned transhipments – a controversial practice linked to chronic overfishing at sea – after what it said was an “illegal operation” by a Taiwanese ship caught near its waters by Greenpeace last week.

The crackdown on vessels unloading their catch to “motherships” at sea, enabling them to stay and plunder ocean fishing grounds for years at a time, would help “end the laundering of fish” by high seas “pirates”, the Nauru Fisheries and Marine Resources Authority (NFMRA) said.

It comes after activists on the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior II last week claimed to have uncovered a huge pirate tuna fishing operation in waters around Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Micronesia.

Greenpeace said the Taiwanese longliner Shuen De Ching No.888 appeared to have been fishing in those waters without permission for two months.

The activists allegedly found 75kg of shark fins from some 42 sharks, where the ship’s log recorded only three shark carcasses – an alleged violation of Taiwanese and Pacific regulations dictating that fins make up 5% or less of the weight of the total catch.

The Shuen De Ching had also logged an improbably low catch of five tonnes of fish, the activists said, suggesting it had been unloading to a mothership.

The NFMRA, which credited Greenpeace’s exposure of an “illegal operation” for prompting the Nauru government ban, said it regularly observed “longliners in the high seas acting suspiciously and intruding on our borders”.

“These seas act like a safe haven for pirate boats, and transhipment allows them to stay at sea even longer, and launder fish out of the area,” it said.

Nauru has become the third Pacific nation to issue a blanket ban on transhipments in its exclusive economic zone, after Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.

The Greenpeace campaigner Lagi Toribau, who was among the activists who boarded Shuen De Ching, has said enforcement of fishing laws remains the key challenge for Pacific nations, many of whom relied on a single patrol boat to police their waters.

Foreign oceangoing fleets, which took 80% of the total tuna catch in the Pacific, often skirt local fishing licence fees by sticking to the high seas, according to the NFMRA.

The NFMRA’s chief executive, Charleston Deiye, said transhipment was a major cause of overfishing, which was “the single biggest threat to the world’s largest tuna fisheries”.

“Our residents have been feeling the pinch more sharply over the last few years,” he said. “We can see that there are less fish for us because many of these unregulated foreign fishing vessels are taking more than their fair share and then selling it into international markets.

“They’re putting the fishing industry out of business. We must protect our waters and our economy.”

Deiye said the ban, an act of solidarity with Pacific neighbours, would “go a long way towards putting pacific island fisheries back in action”.

PNG, Micronesia, Vanuatu and Samoa ban only foreign vessels from carrying out the practice.

New Zealand and Tokelau prohibit transhipments “with exceptions”, while Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and the Cook Islands allow the practice but only with government authorisation.