Pacific Island nations aim for tuna cartel

Published: 26 February, 2010

Leaders from eight Pacific Island nations whose waters provide a quarter of the world's tuna announced plans on Thursday to form a regional tuna cartel to increase their share of the profits from the lucrative fish.

The initiative — by the mostly poor nations with little land but controlling a stretch of equatorial ocean one and a half times the size of the United States — is intended to increase their share of the USD 2 billion generated annually from tuna caught in their waters.

More than 85 per cent of the revenues currently go to fishing companies and others based in the US, Japan, Taiwan and other Asian countries.