Page 36 - November 2021 IB FINAL

Fisheries Fisheries

A MIMRA fisheries observer, left, oversees the unloading of tuna for delivery to the Majuro-based Pan Pacific Foods tuna processing facility that cleans, filets, cooks and
freezes the tuna for later export to canneries internationally. Photo: Hilary Hosia.

the jet service was discontinued, the locally-owned longlin- service for tuna exports to Hawaii, the Marshall Islands with
ers sputtered along for a while and then were converted to the aid of a skilled team of fisheries experts provided through
training or cargo vessels or became a permanent part of the an Asian Development Bank grant, identified the essential
Majuro shoreline. missing link: The Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority,
In surveying the financial wreckage of the late 1980s to the fisheries department, was simply not involved in managing
mid-1990s, an essential point to acknowledge is that these the oceanic fishery for the nation.
failed attempts to kick-start a domestic tuna industry laid This ADB supported work with the Marshall Islands Marine
the groundwork for influencing later, more effective develop- Resources Authority and the wider national government
ments in the fishery sector. They underlined the fact far more operation laid the foundation for the future. From the start of
effectively than any consultant-prepared study could about the two-year project to reinvent the fishery sector, it ex-
the folly of government-financed business initiatives. And not plained: “The situation can be changed for the better by the
only government-funded initiatives best left to industry, but government adopting welcoming and enabling policies which
also the near total absence of a fisheries governance struc- recognize that the private sector and not the public sector
ture, including fisheries advisors and a fisheries department should power investment and development. The foreign fleet
skilled in the wide range of industry issues — these were the should be viewed as valued and regular customers, not as
details that were critical to long-term success but were miss- targets for opportunistic plunder.
ing at this embryonic period of domestic fisheries develop- Their long-term presence and their alliances of mutual ben-
ment in the Marshall Islands. efit with the Marshall Islands private sector underwrite many
In 1996, a report for the government confirmed what the of the programs and investments needed if the objectives set
earlier report had said about the fisheries environment in the for the Marshall Islands economy are to be achieved.”
Marshall Islands: “…It is not attractive for foreign vessels to This led to the drafting of a revised and expanded MIMRA
use the RMI facilities.” “Not attractive” in part because of Act that was adopted by Nitijela (parliament) in 1997, con-
heavy government subsidy in some areas, and because of the firming and detailing as never before MIMRA’s mandate as the
lack of good governance and transparency in the process of government entity in charge of fisheries. Just as the conclu-
fisheries development. This observation was from the Incep- sion of negotiations for a United Nations Convention on the
tion Report of the National Fisheries Development Plan for Law of the Sea was a watershed event for the world in 1982,
the Marshall Islands. By 1996, as Air Marshall Islands halted jet the adoption of the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Author-

36 Islands Business, November 2021