158 EIGHTH PACIFIC SCIENCE CONGRESS 



in those areas, through combined activities of government agencies and 

 commercial companies, until in 1937 a peak production was obtained 

 amounting to 40 thousand metric tons. The advent of the war, of 

 course, terminated this fishery. At present it is inactive except for local 

 fishing by islanders on a subsistence basis. 



A small fishery for skipjack occurs during the summer months in 

 the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands, producing, on the average, about 

 9 million pounds per year. The limiting factor here is the great scar- 

 city of live bait which is required for the capture of skipjack. 



Essentially unexploited regions in which skipjack are known to 

 occur in commercial quantities include all of Oceania and the seas to 

 the north of New Zealand, the Coral Sea, and the Arafura and Banda 

 Seas. In addition to problems of transportation and marketing, the 

 scarcity of live bait in part of this area deters the development of 

 fisheries there. 



Potential for Future Development 



From the foregoing very brief review of the Pacific tuna fisheries, 

 it is evident that the several species are very unevenly exploited in dif- 

 ferent parts of their range. Certain regions support rather intensive 

 fisheries, while no fishing at all is done in others. 



With the demand for tuna increasing year by year, utilization of 

 presently unexploited and underexploited tuna stocks may be expected 

 to follow in due course, as their exploitation becomes profitable, either 

 as a result of increased demand, and consequently increased price, or 

 as a result of lower harvesting costs due to improved or novel fishing 

 methods. Certainly the potential annual harvest from the Pacific tuna 

 fisheries is a good deal larger than that being taken at the present time. 



Problems of Conservation 

 Since the tuna resources throughout much of the Pacific Ocean are 

 obviously not being exploited to anywhere near their maximum yield, 

 problems of maintaining the supply through management are, from the 

 broad viewpoint, of secondary importance at the moment, and fhe in- 

 terests of most tuna researchers have, consequently, been centered cmi 

 problems connected with expansion and development of the fisheries. 

 The tuna stocks are not unlimited, however, and the rapid growth of 

 the fisheries will inevitably bring forth in the not too distant future the 

 necessity of conservation of the stocks to produce maximum yields. The 

 fishery for the tropical tunas of the Eastern Pacific is already sufficiently 

 intense and some of the nations having interests in that fishery have be- 

 come concerned about the possibility of the approach of overfishing. 



