Leaders of eight Pacific nations responsible for a quarter of the world's tuna catch vowed Thursday to conserve stocks of the fish and increase their own financial return from the lucrative industry.
Despite their waters producing much of the world's tuna, the impoverished nations receive only three to four percent of the wholesale value of the catch, which is mainly controlled by foreign companies.
At a summit in the Palau capital Koror, the eight leaders vowed to coordinate efforts to increase their share of the income while stepping up conservation efforts.
"We are one of the players in this global industry," said Transform Aqorau, the director general of the eight-country grouping, known as the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA).
"We are therefore in a powerful position to influence and shape the global tuna market in ways that can improve the social and economic well-beings of our people if we want to," he said.
Aqorau said the PNA could leverage its position to control tuna output and influence prices in the same way as the Saudi-led OPEC cartel uses its power in the global oil market.
Two Pacific species, bigeye and yellowfin, which are popular in the Japanese sushi market, are in decline. Skipjack tuna, which is used for canning, is still abundant, scientists say.
Thursday's agreement aims to develop ways to increase income through higher access fees and greater restrictions on fishing in the Pacific waters.
The PNA, which has established an office in the Marshall Islands, will extend the closure of some fishing areas and introduce competitive bidding for licences.
"We the Pacific island states own the fishing grounds, and so we must bring under control access to these fishing grounds," Palau President Johnson Toribiong said.
The PNA member countries are the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
Europe meanwhile is lobbying for a worldwide ban on commercial fishing of bluefin tuna, the king of sushi and sashimi. The move has angered Japan, which consumes most of the bluefin catch from both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
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