Fisheries Newsletter No 148 (September–December 2015)

Editorial

On Asian markets, the difference in price between a well processed and a badly processed sea cucumber (beche-de-mer), can be 5–10 fold. With sea cucumber stocks rapidly declining, it is important that fishers receive the highest possible financial return from the limited number of animals they are able or authorised to catch. In their article, Ram and coauthors  describe a processing technique for two high-value species in Fiji that results in high-end products (link to article). The authors believe that fishers who need fewer sea cucumbers to make the same income should be more inclined to comply with management measures (e.g. quotas or closed seasons) that are implemented to release pressure on wild stocks.

The stock structure of exploited species is an important piece of information needed by fisheries managers to properly manage fisheries. There is currently very limited information on the stock structure of deepwater snappers in the Pacific Ocean. Goldstien and coauthors partly fill this information gap with their examination of the genetic diversity of three important deepwater snapper species: the flame tail, the ruby and the pygmy ruby snappers (link to article).

The European Union has established a system to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, known as the ‘EU IUU Regulation’. In his article, Francisco Blaha details some of the disruptive consequences of this regulation for Pacific Island tuna fisheries. He reports that the strict observance of this regulation is extremely challenging for small country authorities, leading to more warnings (yellow cards) being issued in the Pacific than in any other region in the world (link to article).

Aymeric Desurmont
Fisheries Information Specialist