The Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the West­ern Cen­tral At­lantic Fish­ery Com­mis­sion (WE­CAFC), an FAO re­gion­al fish­eries body, is host­ing a re­gion­al work­shop to build ca­pac­i­ty for im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 2009 FAO Agree­ment on Port States Mea­sures among the Caribbean Small-Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS). The work­shop is be­ing held in Port-of-Spain this week and is be­ing at­tend­ed by more than 80 of­fi­cials from 25 coun­tries.

Il­le­gal, un­re­port­ed and un­reg­u­lat­ed (IUU) fish­ing con­tin­ues to be a threat to the ef­fec­tive con­ser­va­tion and man­age­ment of fish stocks in the wider Caribbean re­gion.IUU fish­ing is caus­ing eco­nom­ic and so­cial loss­es for the Caribbean coun­tries and neg­a­tive­ly im­pacts their food se­cu­ri­ty.The FAO Agree­ment on Port State Mea­sures to Com­bat Il­le­gal, Un­re­port­ed and Un­reg­u­lat­ed Fish­ing has been de­signed to in­ten­si­fy glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween fish­eries and port au­thor­i­ties, coast guards and navies.

The aim is to elim­i­nate IUU fish­ing, through glob­al­ly agreed min­i­mum stan­dards for con­cert­ed ac­tion, en­abling bet­ter in­spec­tions and con­trols at the ports on ves­sels and in­creas­ing flag state re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

In his open­ing re­marks, Bar­ton Clarke, FAO rep­re­sen­ta­tive to T&T, em­pha­sised that the agree­ment is im­por­tant in par­tic­u­lar for SIDS as it em­pow­ers them to ex­ert greater con­trol of their own wa­ters and over shared stocks, in­creas­ing trans­paren­cy of fish­ing op­er­a­tions. Coastal fish­eries re­sources of Caribbean SIDS are al­ready un­der pres­sure and il­le­gal fish­ing from for­eign ves­sels is adding to this.Most tar­get fish stocks in the Caribbean re­gion are al­ready ei­ther ful­ly ex­ploit­ed or over ex­ploit­ed.

Caribbean SIDS' fish­eries are car­ried out most­ly by small-scale ves­sels in coastal near-shore ar­eas, but in­dus­tri­al fleets from oth­er coun­tries fish fur­ther off-shore and on the high seas of the West­ern Cen­tral At­lantic–vast ar­eas that are dif­fi­cult to man­age and mon­i­tor.These fish­eries neg­a­tive­ly af­fect the avail­abil­i­ty of fish to the small-scale fleets of the SIDS.

The Agree­ment on Port State Mea­sures pro­vides Caribbean SIDS with a cost-ef­fec­tive way to com­bat IUU fish­ing. Where there is ev­i­dence of IUU fish­ing by a ves­sel that re­quests en­try to its port, the port State may pro­hib­it such en­try.Where the ves­sel has en­tered port, the port State may–or in cer­tain cir­cum­stances must–de­ny the use of its ports to the ves­sel for such prof­itable ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing land­ings, trans­ship­ments, sup­ply and ser­vices.

A har­monised sys­tem of port in­spec­tions, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mea­sures means that the ves­sel is un­able to of­fload its valu­able catch or car­ry on fish­ing op­er­a­tions and may be squeezed out of busi­ness.Clarke en­cour­aged the Caribbean SIDS to be­come Cham­pi­ons of Port State Mea­sures and elim­i­nate joint­ly il­le­gal fish­eries in the re­gion.

Joan Han­ni­bal-Phillips, act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, em­pha­sised the com­mit­ment of the Gov­ern­ment to tak­ing steps to­wards mak­ing T&T a food se­cure na­tion through, among oth­er mea­sures, the man­age­ment of the ma­rine re­sources and pre­vent­ing or de­ter­ring ac­tions that can un­der­mine the ef­fec­tive­ness of per­ti­nent man­age­ment and con­ser­va­tion mea­sures.The Unit­ed Na­tions has de­clared 2014 In­ter­na­tion­al Year of the SIDS.

It is wide­ly recog­nised that fish­ing is an es­sen­tial eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty for the small is­lands and that it con­tributes to food se­cu­ri­ty, em­ploy­ment and liveli­hoods.The Agree­ment on Port State Mea­sures will, once rat­i­fied by 25 coun­tries, en­ter in­to force and will en­able par­tic­i­pat­ing fish im­port­ing coun­tries to as­sure their con­sumers that fish and fish­ery prod­ucts on their mar­kets de­rive from le­git­i­mate fish­eries.

Through in­creased trace­abil­i­ty of fish it is ex­pect­ed that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Agree­ment will lead to re­duced mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties for il­le­gal fish­ers and re­duced costs for sea-based in­spec­tion while in­creas­ing the more eco­nom­i­cal port-based in­spec­tions.