Residents of small Pacific island nations rely on tuna for local jobs and foreign fishing fees, which fund education, healthcare, roads and more. Amid climate change, fishermen have been working harder to catch fewer fish and it’s getting worse.

by Nathan Eagle  
Deputy editor for Civil Beat
Honolulu, Hawai’i

Adrian Wickham is worried. 

He sits quietly in the back of a cavernous conference hall, fiddling with his fedora as he listens to Pacific island nation leaders, renowned marine scientists and international fishery managers talk tuna. 

Wickham knows tuna. That’s been his business for decades as the manager of SolTuna, the Solomon Islands’ only cannery. 

And it’s been his country’s lifeblood for generations, providing food, jobs and a reliable revenue stream for government services.

He didn’t need to fly 200 miles from Noro, where SolTuna is based, to a United Nations gathering to know that things are changing. The tuna are moving out.

Fishermen have been working harder to catch fewer fish in recent years, and it’s getting worse. 

By adding bigger and better boats to the primary fleet that supplies the cannery, SolTuna has continued to grow. Without a new plan, those days seem numbered.

Warming waters are driving the tuna east where their prey — squid, shrimp, sardines, whatever they can find — has become more abundant in cooler waters farther out at sea. 

That’s why 300 delegates from 28 countries, including Wickham, have come together. It’s an economic crisis, fueled by climate change, and perhaps the most perplexing problem they’ll confront at the Honiara Summit.

“It’s worrying,” Wickham says during a break in the meetings. “It’s hard to imagine tuna leaving archipelagos and being purely high seas.”

Nearly 10% of the Solomon Islands’ government revenue is tied to tuna. The cannery is one of the nation’s biggest employers, alongside forestry and mining. 

More than 2,000 people, mostly women, come from throughout the country to clean, cut and can fish at SolTuna, which has spent millions of dollars over the past decade to build up its tuna processing capacity.

About a dozen Pacific island countries are facing this predicament, including Fiji, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea.

Average tuna catch rates are projected to fall nearly a third by 2050, scientists say, delivering a financial hit of up to $140 million annually for these developing countries. It’s on average 37% of each government’s yearly revenue.

The Solomon Islands is one of about a dozen island nations in the Pacific that rely on tuna fishing.

China and other industrial fleets pull in the bulk of the tuna caught in the Pacific, paying an access fee when inside each country’s exclusive economic zone. 

For the Solomon Islands, this zone is a misshapen ring that extends 200 miles around its 992 islands and atolls.

Outside these zones, foreign fleets essentially fish for free, so as the tuna disappear, so, too, does the money.

Tuna Provide Much-Needed Jobs

Behind a security gate at 1 Tuna Drive in the remote Solomon Islands town of Noro, women huddle together on a bench, hiding from the sun as they wait for rides home. They have just finished working an overnight shift at SolTuna, processing tons of yellowfin and skipjack in a row of factory buildings that line the coast.

Several fishing boats bob in the blue waters at an adjacent dock, just past the stacks of Maersk shipping containers. 

National Fisheries Developments, SolTuna’s sister company, employs 400 people to man the small but growing fleet of purse seine and pole-and-line vessels that supply the cannery with about 30,000 tons of tuna annually. 

That’s enough to provide the equivalent of 50 cans of tuna for every man, woman and child in the Solomons and still send some off to foreign markets.

Steady jobs are highly sought on these islands, where average salaries hover around $2,200 a year. Most families live paycheck to paycheck, relying on strong communal ties and subsistence farming and fishing to survive.

People in the Solomons, which has been inhabited for at least 30,000 years, used to catch tuna with hooks made from oyster and turtle shells, handlining them out of dugout wooden canoes, according to the 2007 book “Capturing Wealth from Tuna.” 

Islanders still go out to catch tuna with handlines, but today they favor fiberglass canoes, outboard motors and steel hooks.

Up the road from the cannery, a family ambles past an oinking pig, squawking chickens and men drinking warm SolBrew beer in the shade under their tin-sided homes mounted on wooden stilts. 

Kids carry breakfast dishes to a communal sink as neighbors hang hand-washed laundry to dry.

A woman joins her in-laws under their home for a brief visit. She’s worked at SolTuna for the past 13 years and though she is grateful for the income she still frets about whether she will be paid on time. 

Like others in the village, she doesn’t want to give her name for fear of finding herself unemployed like her brother.

“People in the Solomons need jobs,” says Sony Toribule, a 43-year-old married father of four who lives a 20-minute canoe paddle from SolTuna.

Toribule worked for National Fisheries Developments for 23 years before resigning in 2018 as a quality control supervisor. Recently he’s come back as a contractor to unload tuna. 

While the fisheries workforce is almost entirely local, international forces have long played a role here.

SolTuna was one of global seafood producer Tri Marine’s plants until Italy-based Bolton Group acquired it several years ago. Some of the tuna it processes is sold to Europe as frozen loins and fish oil; some is canned for export to Australia, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries.

But much of the canned tuna remains a domestic product. Solomon Blue and SolTuna’s premium products — cans packed with white and red tuna flakes in oil and flavored with local chilis or curry — are Solomon Islands staples. 

They are enjoyed on crackers, straight out of the can with cucumbers or alongside sweet potatoes and taro. 

“SolTuna products are the main dish in all Solomon Islanders’ homes,” says Dorothy Wickham, who grew up about 8 miles from the cannery managed by her uncle, Adrian. 

What’s At Risk In The Pacific

Four monstrous ceiling fans spin overhead as three dozen dignitaries in matching blue polos find their seats at the front table inside Friendship Hall, a multipurpose facility that’s part of a new sports complex in Honiara, where the UN summit is being held.

It’s day 2, a pivotal work day without any of the fanfare of the opening ceremony. Back-to-back sessions feature scientists, politicians and policymakers debating sustainable fisheries management, trying to find consensus on measures they can take to France for the global United Nations Ocean Conference that begins June 8. 

That includes figuring out what to do about the shifting tuna stocks.

Johann Bell, a fisheries scientist who lived in the Solomons in the 1990s while working on a coastal aquaculture project, is at a back table conferring with colleagues from Conservation International and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, which provides scientific and technical assistance to the region.

They are trying to persuade Pacific leaders at the summit to take action now in response to scientific modeling that shows the financial consequences for small Pacific island nations of the decline of tuna in their waters. 

“It’s not that the fish are going to migrate,” Bell explains. “It’s that the productivity will decrease in the western area and increase in the eastern area.”

He works the room, the hallways, the rainy bus rides back and forth from the hotel. He’s rooted in science, but turning that into action demands a lot of lobbying.

Bell says it’s not a matter of if tuna biomass will shift away from the exclusive economic zones of the 10 most tuna-dependent countries in the Pacific — but when, how fast and to what extent. And knowing this will let Pacific Island nations identify solutions that minimize the economic consequences of climate change.

From 2015 to 2018, the Solomon Islands annually received an average of more than $41 million in access fees from foreign fishing fleets, according to a study Bell did with 30 international scientists in 2021. 

The contrasts are enormous from place to place: Papua New Guinea received $134 million, 4% of its government revenue, for instance, while Kirabati received $128 million, almost 71% of its government revenue.

That’s what’s at risk from the tuna moving out of their exclusive waters.

Pacific island leaders, for the most part, don’t doubt the science or the stakes. They just need it to be more robust. Bell knows this. It’s why he spent the past four years on a plan to develop advance warning systems for the region. 

Now it was time to unveil that plan.

Collecting Evidence As Pacific Tuna Relocate

Stuart Minchin, director-general of the Pacific Community, climbs up the steps to stand on a stage before a backdrop of international flags. 

He recounts the thousands of pages of grant applications, years of effort — “all the blood, sweat and tears of regional partners” that led to this moment.

The world’s largest climate fund is pledging $107 million to help Pacific island nations adapt to the tuna moving out. It’s the biggest grant for tuna that the Green Climate Fund has ever awarded.

“It’s a huge outcome that will have impact for many years to come,” Minchin says as delegates nod in approval.

The science supported by the Green Climate Fund — a pot of money the UN established in 2010 to help countries adapt to climate change — is expected to clear up a lot of the uncertainty around the 2021 study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. 

Half of the $107 million in grant money will go toward this effort, and half will go to boosting nearshore fishing, which has been on the decline for years from poor management and environmental changes.

Scientists say they will be able to confirm through genetic testing that the same family of fish that was in one country’s waters has indeed moved to international waters. 

And, Minchin says, that it was through no fault of these small island states, but rather a product of global climate change.

Overfishing can’t be blamed for tuna’s decline, scientists say, as the fish have been sustainably harvested in recent years following a series of conservation measures.

This new data could help countries recoup the money they are expected to lose from the shifting tuna and better prepare for the future. 

The climate fund project will let countries collect the CSI type of evidence they need to demonstrate “the actual loss and damage that we are receiving as Pacific members through the movement of that stock,” Minchin says.

Pacific leaders heralded the announcement, even though the hard data is still years away.

Paying The Price For Other Nations’ Sins

A vendor laughs as she pulls a squid out of a dead tuna’s mouth at the Honiara Central Market. 

She lines up several tuna on a display stand as the country’s biggest market — now boasting more than 100 stalls — comes to life on a recent weekday morning.

Seafood is on sale from around the islands, but fishermen complain there’s been less to offer of late. 

It’s gotten harder to fill their nets as the capital city has grown, pollution has worsened and the reefs have degraded from warmer, more acidic waters.

The other half of the Green Climate Fund’s $107 million grant will go to help local fishermen catch more tuna closer to home. Fish-aggregating devices — floating objects that attract pelagics such as tuna and mahimahi — are to be installed for the benefit of coastal communities, Bell says. These manmade rafts, anchored to the seabed in a few hundred feet of water, mimic drifting coconuts or logs that the fish see as shelter for prey.

Nearshore fisheries have needed better stewardship in the Solomons and other Pacific island nations for years, a point Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele acknowledges on the second day of the summit.

“While there is a need to strengthen management of nearshore fish stocks, offshore management is good,” he tells the crowd of delegates.

With less food available close to shore, there’s increased demand for tuna. And many Pacific islanders already don’t eat enough protein, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization guidelines.

Deploying fish-aggregating devices may bring more fish closer to shore in the short-term as the world attempts to address the rising ocean temperatures that are at the root of the problem.

Bell has advocated at the international level for the world’s biggest polluters to do more to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord, namely preventing global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels. That could stave off some of the worst effects of climate change, including the warmer ocean waters that are driving tuna away while killing the coral reefs that are foundational to fishing.

But world leaders have largely failed to meet these goals. Fossil fuel consumption reached a record high in 2023. The World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record. And President Donald Trump has again pulled the United States — the planet’s second biggest carbon emitter after China — out of the Paris Agreement. 

Pacific island countries are disproportionately affected by global inaction. Rising seas are making some nations uninhabitable. Cyclones have grown more deadly and destructive. And saltwater intrusion during abnormally high tides is wrecking agriculture. 

“The best scientific advice available says that climate change is expected to reduce the tuna biomass in our waters to an extent that will remove a substantial share of the gains that we should be expecting from the sustainability of our fisheries,” says Sangaa Clark, chief executive officer of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, which controls the world’s largest sustainable tuna purse seine fishery.

“The higher the level of carbon emissions, the worse the impacts will be,” she says during a panel discussion at the summit. “We consider that unfair and unjust.”

Time To Start Planning Now

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape takes a breath before saying what he has flown 1,100 miles to Honiara to say. 

“If I catch illegal fishing, I will sink all the boats,” he says. 

“If there is any sense of morality left in you, take this message back to your countries: The ocean is a global asset, a carbon sink, a supermarket and a superhighway for all your ships and submarines. It needs protection.”

He, like other Pacific leaders, is tired of constantly fighting to protect vital natural resources that have provided a living and a way of life. When not battling indirect threats from climate change, they’re fending off direct threats from foreign ships plundering their waters. 

“No one needs to lecture us on fish sustainability — it is our lifestyle,” he says. “This lecture should be taken to the big, industrial polluters who continue to pollute our oceans.”

Some Pacific island nations are banding together behind a new initiative that aims “to leverage their shared tuna resources and find collective and inclusive investment pathways,” as the intergovernmental Forum Fisheries Agency put it. 

The FFA, headquartered in Honiara, has overseen management of more than half of the world’s tuna stock for the past half century.

Bell finds the so-called East New Britain Initiative among the most promising solutions.

FFA leaders, who called on more countries to sign on at the summit, say the “hubs and spokes” initiative intends to maximize the economic benefits from each member country’s tuna fisheries by processing more of it in the region and creating value-added products, such as smoked, dried or marinated fish.

They’ll have to overcome resistance from China and other foreign fleets to pull it off. And that’s how fisheries policy in this part of the world, a region held together by a web of shifting, fragile alliances, veers from science and economics to geopolitics.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, which includes representatives of more than two dozen countries and related nongovernmental organizations, will play a crucial role in figuring out how to adapt to tuna’s shifting stocks. Some officials, however, fear regional management organizations like this one won’t be able to respond fast enough.

It took decades to course-correct after years of overfishing decimated tuna populations. The key stocks — yellowfin, skipjack, albacore and bigeye — are finally healthy again, thanks in large part to the commission’s work. But Pacific nations need to start planning now for the shift of tuna stocks into the high seas, according to Rhea Moss-Christian, the commission’s executive director.

“It’s the question of the century,” she says before a session on the summit’s final day.

Where Tuna Meets Global Politics

On a recent Sunday in Noro, the drizzling rain looks like white curtains flapping against the distant green jungle as a mother ushers her kids down a dirt road to church.

One of the children shakes his hand free from hers to chase a ball across the newly paved street. It rolls between a row of new utility poles, yet to be wired together.

The boy stops to peer beyond a corrugated metal gate. Behind a “Do Not Enter” sign is a gray steel building, labeled with gold and red Hanzi characters, that houses Chinese workers the federal government here has turned to in recent years to improve local roads and aviation facilities.

Chinese influence is prevalent throughout the country. Menus at some restaurants have flipped from serving local favorites to fried noodles and dumplings. 

Construction signs appear in Mandarin. Chinese flags flew outside Friendship Hall when it was built with Chinese support alongside a new, 10,000-seat stadium, aquatic center and other infrastructure needed for the Solomon Islands to host the Pacific Games in 2023.

The current prime minister, Manele, like the prior one who’s now trying to oust him, Manasseh Sogavare, have openly courted China and the millions of dollars in funding it has provided.

The Solomon Islands severed its ties with Taiwan in 2019 and went all-in with Beijing, signing a security pact in 2022.

Tuna is part of the calculus of such cooperation. 

China, the United States and Australia have all shown interest in investing in a second tuna cannery in Malaita, which would be the biggest project in the Solomons Islands’ history as an independent country. There’s money in tuna, but it also offers a foothold in the region.

“Tuna is the currency for commerce in the Western Central Pacific region,” says Kelly Kryc, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deputy assistant secretary for international fisheries. 

She was a political appointee under President Joe Biden and represented the U.S. at international fishery meetings.

“Any shifting of the economy creates an opening for influence, so not only is tuna an issue of food security and economic security, but also national security,” she says. 

“And that applies not only to the countries in the region, but also for the United States.” 

More than 150,000 tons of tuna worth about $180 million is caught in waters controlled by the Solomon Islands alone — only about a quarter of which goes to SolTuna.

Most of that tuna never enters the local market; it’s transferred at sea to larger vessels just off the coast of Honiara. 

But the revenue the Solomon Islands collects from those nations for the right to fish in its waters is a lifeline, helping pay for education, healthcare, roads and more. Losing it would be devastating.

During her tenure with NOAA, Kryc led several successful climate initiatives. With funding from the U.S. and Taiwan, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission is planning to do a climate risk assessment of the management measures that it has passed to date. That could provide an important backstop against shifting tuna stocks.

“If it works,” she says, “it could be a paradigm shift in how we manage species in the face of climate change.”

‘I Hope Something Is Done’

Adrian Wickham wanders across the conference room to greet an old friend, the current prime minister of Tuvalu whom Wickham knows from his time as director of the Forum Fisheries Agency.

A low-lying atoll east of the Solomons particularly vulnerable to rising seas, Tuvalu is a place where climate refugees are no longer theoretical. Australia recently agreed to host 280 of them in exchange for veto power on the small island nation’s foreign defense decisions. 

That could be a cautionary tale for Wickham about the realities of climate change, but instead he is in a wait-and-see mode. 

He says he will be looking west to Papua New Guinea to watch how the shift of tuna from warming waters unfolds there. 

A half-million tons of tuna is caught annually in the waters around Papua New Guinea, a nation with six canneries and nearly 12 million mouths to feed — 14 times the population of the Solomons.

Wickham has played such a pivotal role in growing SolTuna for so long, it’s hard for him to picture the 52-year-old company — and the resources it relies on — going anywhere but up, despite all the alarm bells scientists rang at the summit. And even harder for him to imagine it happening anytime soon.

“I won’t be here on this earth when the final results are out,” Wickham says. “But for future generations … for them, and their kids, I hope something is done.”

* This article was first published by Honolulu-based online news outlet Civil Beat.