Crisis or opportunity? An interview with Fisheries Agency Director-General James Sha

“Is the distant-water fishing industry running out of line?” In early May, Chiang Huang-chih, a professor of international law at National Taiwan University, wrote to the media calling on the government not to abandon this maritime goldmine. Chiang warned that if the government did not give careful consideration to the fate of this industry, “then other countries will gradually take over quotas now held by the ROC, and once that happens it will be impossible to reverse the situation.”

James Sha, director-general of the Fisheries Agency of the Council of Agriculture, replies to such concerns by saying, “The government has an unshirkable duty toward the distant-water fishing industry.” He stressed in an interview with Taiwan Panorama that the industry is “a child that has already been born,” so the government “has a duty to give it a good upbringing.”

But, says Sha with regret, “Frankly, a lot of people in Taiwan have a very poor understanding of the situation in the world’s oceans and of maritime rights, and they only look at the condition of the distant-water fishing industry from a narrow, land-based, purely economic angle.” Excerpts from our interview follow:

Q: Over the last 20 years, how has the larger environment changed with regard to resources available to the marine fishing industry?

A: Long ago people were free to fish as much as they wanted. But as technology and fishing techniques have progressed, it has become possible to exploit even previously unreachable fishing grounds, and now more than 70% of all ocean fish species (especially tuna) are considered to be “over-fished.”

It has gotten so bad that signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) have even considered listing the northern bluefin tuna [one of the most productive core species of the global seafood industry] as endangered. What’s more, in the past we were able to get a quota of 1200 metric tons of southern bluefin tuna, but this year it is only 500 tons. Statistics like these are a warning: “There are just not enough fish to go around.”

For more than a decade now, the total catch in global marine fisheries has levelled off at roughly 90 million tons per year, and will certainly never get any larger. This is why international fisheries organizations have been very active in the management of fish resources, by limiting catch volumes on the high seas, cutting back on the number of authorized fishing vessels, and cracking down on illegal fishing. The biggest challenge facing the global oceanic fishing industry is to find a balance between continued development and the protection of fisheries resources.

Q: Since there is little chance that the decline of ocean resources can be reversed, how will our distant-water fishing industry adapt? What changes will have to be made?

A: Since 1990 or so, Taiwan, like many countries, has been devoting greater attention to the problem of the decline of ocean resources. The government has taken a guiding role, the industry has agreed to cooperate, and, at a cost of over NT$5 billion, the number of distant-water fishing vessels has been reduced by 15%. The number is currently steady at about 2000.

Despite this, our fishing fleets for tuna, squid, and saury are still among the largest in the world, so if there are any problems, we immediately attract international criticism. This is the crux of the problem faced by our distant-water fishing industry.

Q: What do international fisheries organizations think about the capabilities of Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry?

A: We have a lot of vessels and catch a lot of fish, and we also collect a lot of data about fisheries resources. The international community needs this data to manage fisheries resources, so although Taiwan’s international status is exceptional, we are a member of virtually all international organizations related to the fishing industry, and we have received tuna quotas for all three main maritime zones (Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans).

Q: If we simply follow the regulations of international organizations, will this put us in a better position to negotiate bigger quotas and expand the scale of our distant-water fishing industry?

A: Taiwan is already considered a hyper-developed country insofar as the fishing industry is concerned, so it is necessary that everyone understands that we will never be able to expand our industry, and we must conscientiously fulfill our international duties. The world’s ocean resources are limited, and our common goal should be to limit our use of them to sustainable levels. Since poor coastal countries are also seeking to develop their fishing industries, where will their quotas come from? We can’t just say, “Sorry, we’ve used up all the quotas, so you have to stay undeveloped.” We have to go the extra mile, and release some of our quotas—that’s only the right thing to do toward the international community.

Q: Will there be another wave of restructuring, then, in Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry?

A: Right now we have about 2000 distant-water fishing vessels, and we simply can’t expand this number in the future. As for the number of ships we will have in the future, we have to think about “localization,” and, through commercial cooperation, transfer a part of our industry to developing countries, so that those countries can also benefit from fisheries resources.

If you look at it from a global level, no one can keep a dominant position for themselves alone at the top of the marine fishing industry indefinitely. This is where governments have a role to play: They can create a positive environment for sharing of fisheries resources, for example by signing fisheries joint-venture investment guarantee agreements.

Q: Mainland China has been aggressively expanding its distant-water fishing industry in recent years. Compared to them, isn’t Taiwan’s policy too conservative?

A: Most of the mainland’s distant--water fishing is done using trawlers, ships that drag huge nets through the sea to catch whatever species happen to get caught in the net. Based on diplomatic reciprocity, countries with which the mainland has diplomatic relations permit mainland boats to catch fish in their “exclusive economic zones.”

On the other hand, most of our fishing operations have specific targets: tuna, squid, and saury. To use the metaphor of a life cycle, Taiwan is now in middle age, whereas mainland China is an adolescent growing into an adult, and growing very quickly. You also have to consider that the mainland has a very solid international status and is in a stronger position, so they have quite a lot of bargaining chips they can play in the fisheries industry, whereas we have virtually none except for tuna.

The position of the ROC Fisheries Agency is that the distant-water fishing industry makes contributions to diplomatic stability, to the conservation of global marine resources, and to ensuring food supply. Despite our international status, Taiwan has been able to become a member of several international organizations related to management or conservation of marine fisheries. It’s not surprising that earlier this year the mainland declared distant-water fishing to be a “strategic industry” which is instrumental to expanding their diplomatic influence and maritime rights.

Unfortunately the Council for Economic Planning and Development still looks at things only from the point of view of tax revenues and reducing unemployment, and their attitude is that the distant-water fishing industry is making only a limited contribution to the economy.

Admittedly, the distant-water fishing industry offers no direct route to bringing levels of employment back up, mainly because not many Taiwanese are willing to serve on fishing boats at sea, and as a result Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry has only been able to survive by employing low-cost foreign crews. But the industry is very helpful in terms of the indirect employment rate, generating jobs in industries like shipbuilding, fuel, the corporate operations and management of the companies that own the ships, and equipment and supplies. In fact, Taiwan is the world’s number-one supplier of purse seine equipment.

Q: What do international conservationist groups think about Taiwan’s effort thus far?

A: Taiwan’s current distant-water fishing industry is too bloated, and we’ve attracted close attention from the international conservationist group Greenpeace, who have set up an office in Taiwan. What they are hoping for is that we will go beyond merely respecting the rules to taking a leading role in international fisheries management.

For example, Greenpeace criticized us after the recent annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. [At the meeting, held in Guam in March, as a result of the stands taken by the US and Korea, a proposal to reinstitute a ban on “fish aggregation devices” for four months was rejected and some high-seas pockets that had been previously closed to fishing were reopened.] Greenpeace afterwards criticized us, asking why we didn’t step up and oppose the US and Korea, and demanding that we adopt more active fisheries management.

There’s no way that management of international fisheries resources can be accomplished in one fell swoop. The government is not in the same position as non-governmental organizations, because our constituents include a lot people who make a living from fishing, and they depend on us to protect their interests. Before we ask them to improve, first we have to ensure that they can survive, so we are inevitably going to move slower than conservationists would like.