Schwartz swimming among jellyfish

SCHWARTZ: Take the plunge in these Micronesian waters and you enter an alien world, pulsating with life. Here you can swim through a milky way of jellyfish and emerge unscathed. This is just one of the wonders of Palau -

00:11

Aerials. Palau

a collection of hundreds of small islands strung across the Pacific due east of the Philippines and home to some of the best diving on the planet.

00:31

Music

00:43

Schwartz on boat in wetsuit

SCHWARTZ: "Palau is a tiny nation with big ambitions.

00:48

Shark sanctuary

Five years ago it became the first country in the world to introduce a shark sanctuary - now there are ten of them. But the President wants to take it one step further;

00:52

Schwartz on boat in wetsuit

he wants to ban all foreign commercial fishing in Palau's waters".

01:02

Aerials. Palau

Music

01:08

SCHWARTZ: Only bold action, he says, can save the Pacific's collapsing tuna stocks and guarantee Palau's way of life.

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "Palau is so fragile and it is so beautiful that you just have to

01:14

President Remengesau

take the responsible action and minimise the risk that would destroy all of this for our children and future children".

01:29

Aerials. Palau

Music

01:37

Boat travelling to scuba dive site

SCHWARTZ: The President's plan is far-sighted, but also risky

01:42

Schwartz on boat/Shark sanctuary

as foreign fishing provides a big chunk of Palau's income. But the shark sanctuary has shown that conserving sea life rather than killing it, can pay off.

01:51

Tourists on boats

Eco-tourism is far and away Palau's main money-earner.

02:03

Tourists snorkel

Well this is the latest boom industry in Palau -

02:14

Schwartz to camera on boat

snorkelling tours for Japanese and Chinese tourists - and as you can see there's a lot of them.

02:17

Tourists snorkel

Music

02:23

SCHWARTZ: More than a hundred thousand tourists visit each year, that's five holiday-makers for every citizen. 

02:31

Music

02:39

Schwartz prepares for dive

02:44

Underwater. Reef fish

SCHWARTZ: And this is the drawcard - a close encounter with the reefs' residents - among them wrasse, turtles and sharks. There's no baiting or feeding to lure the sharks - here, any meeting is on their terms.

02:51

Schwartz in water with Barnden

[in water] "So white tips, black tips".

RICHARD BARNDEN: "White tips, black tip, grey reef shark. They were the three sharks that we saw". 

03:16

SCHWARTZ: "Do you ever see hammer-heads?"

RICHARD BARNDEN: "Yeah they're the big ones and they're the top trumps. If you see them you're extremely lucky, but we do get them around here".

03:27

Divers on to boat

SCHWARTZ: Divers are prepared to pay a premium for an experience they haven't found elsewhere.

03:38

Carol

DIVER CAROL: "It's funny when you're not expecting sharks to be around you have this innate fear of them but when they are actually swimming around you and you're in their environment you don't feel threatened and it's just really cool".

03:45

Karen

DIVER KAREN: "We were in the Maldives two weeks ago and one of their big dives, Kuredu Express, we didn't see anywhere near as many sharks as we see here in Palau". 

03:57

Carol

DIVER CAROL: I come from Hong Kong and one of the delicacies is sharks' fin soup and it's really quite disgusting that they're still doing that now.

04:06

Shark swimming

Sharks they're endangered now and you've just got to be careful and not eat them".

04:14

Stills. Hunted sharks

Music

04:20

SCHWARTZ: These photos show the gruesome reality in Palau just over a decade ago. Foreign long-line fishing boats hunted sharks for the Asian market, hacking off their fins even while the animals were alive.

04:22

Music

04:36

Schwartz walks with Keane

DERMOT KEANE: [walking along gangplank] "This was a foreign base full of long-liners with shark fins hanging in the rigging".

SCHWARTZ: Dive shop manager Dermot Keane was one of the activists who fought to end the brutal business of shark-finning.

04:42

Stills. Hunted sharks

Music

04:57

DERMOT KEANE: [shark sanctuary advocate] "We had a running battle with these guys next door. Sometimes it escalated into stone throwing and at one point

05:03

Keane. Super:
Dermot Keane
Shark sanctuary advocate

going over with knives and cutting out the shark fins out of the rigging and throwing them over the side and trying to get it through these guys heads, you know, just exactly what was going on".

05:07

Diving in shark sanctuary

SCHWARTZ: His push for a shark sanctuary made him a target for death threats. 

DERMOT KEANE: "There was a lot of opposition. I mean the fishing companies were very, very powerful and very, very prominent".

05:16

Music

05:26

SCHWARTZ: Ultimately, the argument that sharks are worth more alive than dead won out. Palau banned the commercial harvesting of any shark in its exclusive economic zone - an area bigger than France.

05:29

Aerial. Palau

Music

05:43

DERMOT KEANE: "Many other countries inspire to follow us. I mean

05:47

Keane

it's just a small, small little country but we are a beacon for shark conservation and marine conservation around the world". 

05:50

Koror GVs

Music

05:58

At market. Band plays. Women dance

06:02

SCHWARTZ: Just twenty one thousand people live in Palau - most of them here in Koror. It's the main tourist hub and commercial heart of the country.

06:09

Koror GVs

Music

06:20

Farming

SCHWARTZ: Palauans are well off by Pacific standards. They have land to farm and fish to eat - and the president wants to keep it that way.

"And do you worry

06:24

Schwartz with President Remengesau

in terms of developing tourism more you may ruin the environment?

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "Yeah I think we have to be careful that we don't have more boats than fish down there, you know?"

SCHWARTZ: President Tommy Remengesau Junior

06:36

Bay/Side wipe to earlier Foreign Correspondent story

was a key driver of the shark sanctuary. I first met him during a Foreign Correspondent shoot 19 years ago.

06:48

Excerpt from earlier program

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR [archival] : "Now the issue that everybody sees and talks about is ‘Where do we go from here?"

06:56

SCHWARTZ: Palau was newly independent and the then vice-president told me the fledgling nation didn't want to become another high-rise Hawaii.

07:02

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: [archive footage] How should our future look like? Do we want to look like Guam and Saipan? Do we want to look like Hawaii or is there another way Palau can look like Palau?"

07:11

President Remengesau

SCHWARTZ: "Twenty years on, how is Palau fairing and is this the kind of Palau you were thinking of back then?"

07:21

[shot continuous]
Super:
Tommy Remengesau Jnr
President, Palau

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "Well certainly it's not Hawaii but still we have a long way to go before we come like the great state of Hawaii".

SCHWARTZ: "Would you like to be like Hawaii?

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "No, because I said it then and I am saying it now, I think we all have our different tastes and different priorities and aspirations".

07:30

Schwartz and President walk on beach

SCHWARTZ: For this President, the priority is food security - having fish into the future.

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: [walking along beach] "There's a lot of squids

07:53

that come to this place".

SCHWARTZ: "Oh really"?

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "So we used to come... before the hotel was built, yes".

08:01

SCHWARTZ: And that's why he wants to ban all foreign fishing within Palau's two hundred nautical-mile boundary.

08:07

President Remengesau

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: We have to take drastic steps. There are species of Bluefin and species of Bigeye tuna that are dangerously close to being... becoming unsustainable. And so those are the hard facts that we have to look at".

08:18

Fish processing

08:40

SCHWARTZ: Tuna is big business in Palau. The export taxes and access fees paid by foreign fishing companies provide the country's largest earnings after tourism. Most of the catch is landed by the Taiwanese and Japanese fishing fleets and is processed by three Koror-based exporters.

NANNETTE MALSOL: "This is one of the private companies that has

08:43

Malsol. Super:
Nannette Malsol
Director, Palau Fisheries

an agreement with the government of Palau to conduct tuna fisheries and they're offloading their catches here, and as you can see, their catches are primarily Bigeye and Yellowfin ranging from an average

09:09

Fish processing

weight of about 25 kilos up to 70 kilos". 

SCHWARTZ: The highest-grade fish are airfreighted to Japan. Within a couple of days, most of this haul will be expensive sashimi in Tokyo.

09:22

Tuna which doesn't make the cut is left on the ground for local suppliers and restaurateurs to fight over.

09:40

Malsol at processing plant

Nannette Malsol oversees the management of Palau's ocean fisheries. Her staff inspect every fish which comes ashore. 

09:53

NANNETTE MALSOL: "So we have two from our office - one collecting data on the weight and

10:04

Malsol

the species, and another collecting data on the length and that's specifically used for science purposes".

10:08

Fishing boats unload

SCHWARTZ: Figures from Palau and across the western and central Pacific reveal a fishery in crisis. Bigeye tuna is now officially over-fished and Yellowfin is heading that way.

NANNETTE MALSOL: "Bigeye is becoming threatened. And so

10:17

Malsol

we have to start taking care of the Bigeye. The Yellowfin not so much".

10:35

Tuna being unloaded

SCHWARTZ: But enough to warrant urgent action. 

PROFESSOR GLENN HURRY: "Yellowfin tuna's down to about 38 per cent of its original biomass. Bigeye tuna's down now to about 16 per cent. So

10:39

Prof Hurry

in any sense in a well-managed fishery you'd actually stop fishing on that and begin to re-build the stocks".

10:51

Greenpeace vision of Yellowfin and big eye being hauled from hold. Super: Greenpeace

SCHWARTZ: Professor Glenn Hurry heads the commission charged with conserving and managing migratory fish in the western and central Pacific. He says the Yellowfin catch must be reduced and the harvesting of Bigeye tuna stopped if the planet's last great fishery is to survive. As for Bluefin tuna - it's faring even worse -- down to just 4 percent of its original population.

10:57:03

Music

11:23

PROFESSOR GLENN HURRY: "I just think we've got too many vessels in there fishing these fish at the moment and we really need to reduce the pressure and the catch on them.

11:30

Prof Hurry. Super:
Glenn Hurry
Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission

Whether we can do it and whether we can do it quick enough to arrest any further decline is really going to be a challenge for the commission".

11:37

Fishing boats

Music

11:45

SCHWARTZ: The number of fishing boats in the western and central Pacific is increasing: 300 at last count.

11:50

Fish aggregating devices

They're deploying fish aggregating devices - FADS - such as this one recorded by Greenpeace. Even simple structures can attract a school of fish and when combined with sophisticated technology, tuna don't stand a chance.

11:56

Music

12:12

PROFESSOR GLENN HURRY: "They've now got sonar buoys that you put on the fish aggregating devices. So

12:17

Prof Hurry

you can actually sit in your office in a comfortable chair somewhere and you can look up through the satellite and get a

12:22

Fish in water

good idea of the volume of fish underneath each of the fish aggregating devices that you've got out on the ocean and you can direct

12:29

Prof Hurry

your vessels to go and fish FAD 9, fish FAD 16 and then fish FAD 8.

12:36

Fish in hold of fishing boat

So the catching power of the vessels has actually increased enormously as technology's improved over the last five or six years".

12:42

Music

12:49

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "The unfortunate truth right now is with

12:54

modern fishing technology, a school of fish is actually a captured school in its entirety".

12:57

Fish being unloaded

SCHWARTZ: President Remengesau's plan to ban foreign fishing is aimed at giving fish a fighting chance.

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "Palau wants to maximize whatever we can do - not just

13:06

President Remengesau

for our own interest - but because the fish is migratory we would be doing our share of ensuring that the stock when they come through Palau, it's like a rest area or a replenish area". 

13:22

SCHWARTZ: "Isn't that going to be hard to sustain given the enforcement problems?"

13:37

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "Very difficult and I think that's the reality that we're also facing the challenge of how do we enforce what is on paper".

13:40

Schwartz boards patrol boat

SCHWARTZ: I'm about to get a taste of what Palau's marine law enforcement officers are up against.

13:50

The PSS President Remeliik is being readied for sea. The Pacific-class patrol boat, provided by Australia, is Palau's main weapon against illegal fishing. But it's not as effective as it could be.

13:59

Willmore. Super:
Lt Cmdr Alan Willmore
Advisor, Palau Maritime Surveillance

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ALAN WILLMORE: "I reckon we have managed to catch around about 10 per cent of the vessels operating illegally, mainly through our inability to maintain a secure operation at any time and our inability to provide air surveillance to catch these guys.

14:17

Looking at radar

What we're looking at is the Google Earth picture. You can see a distinctive pattern from a vessel".

SCHWARTZ: Lieutenant Commander Alan Willmore, from the Royal Australian Navy, is Palau's Maritime Surveillance Advisor.

14:36

LT CMDR ALAN WILLMORE: [looking at radar] "This one up here he's just loitering on the line so we may be interested in this guy".

14:48

SCHWARTZ: Each fishing boat is required to carry a monitoring system allowing authorities to track its movements. Ships which come up green are clean. Yellow means they have breached their license before.

14:54

LT CMDR ALAN WILLMORE: "And then we have red which are the bad guys which we are most interested in".

15:06

Patrol boat departs

Music

15:11

SCHWARTZ: Identifying suspicious behaviour is not difficult, but catching offenders red-handed is.

15:20

LT CMDR ALAN WILLMORE: "It's catching them either in the act or catching them with the product onboard. These vessels already have the word that Remeliik is out and about. Now they'll either ditch the product over the side or trans-ship it to another vessel so that's the problem". 

15:28

Music

15:43

SCHWARTZ: It's a high-seas game of cat and mouse, but it's the only option these marine police have.

15:51

In their sights on this journey is a fishing boat, about 130 kilometres offshore.

15:58

Music

16:07

Onboard Remeliik

SCHWARTZ: The Remeliik goes on patrol only once or twice a month. The cost of fuel makes it an expensive operation - $50,000 for a nine-day voyage with no guarantee of success - but for the ship's electrician,

16:23

Kloulechad looking through binoculars

Jim Kloulechad, every trip is worthwhile.

16:37

Kloulechad interview

JIM KLOULECHAD: " I grew up as a fisherman, I spent a lot of my time in the water, and to grow up and work on the Remeliik protecting our waters is everything to me".

16:45

Kloulechad in engineering room

SCHWARTZ: Officer Kloulechad was a coral researcher and then official observer on long-line fishing boats. He was horrified by how many sharks, rays and other by-catch were hooked.

16:56

View from boat

It's one of the reasons he joined the Remeliik.

JIM KLOULECHAD: "I'd rather be

17:09

Kloulechad. Super:
Jim Kloulechad
Palau Police

on the police line where I can tell them to stop, because being an observer you are just recording the data, you don't have any powers to stop people from doing what they're doing".

17:14

Patrol boat approaches long-liner

Music

17:26

SCHWARTZ: It's just after dawn and the Remeliik has found its target - a Taiwanese flagged long-liner.

17:31

Kloulechad on radio

JIM KLOULECHAD: "This is Palau police. Request to board on your vessel".

17:40

Music

17:44

Kloulechad boards long-liner

SCHWARTZ: It's a routine inspection, but the officers are armed. The Western and Central Pacific fishery is worth six billion dollars a year - there's a lot at stake.

17:48

Music

18:00

SCHWARTZ: At 26 metres long, the Fure Maan Chyun Number 56 is a pretty standard long-liner. It's Taiwanese owned, but crewed by Indonesians.

18:08

Palau police inspect fish and search ship

The Captain says they've been at sea for three weeks, feeding out hooked lines which stretch as far as 50 kilometres.

18:22

[looking at fish] "Jim what are you doing here?"

JIM KLOULECHAD: "We're checking their catch and make sure they match the fish log that they have. Then identify what species of fish they have, like this one, and the sizes and the condition". 

18:36

SCHWARTZ: "And so far it is matching?"

JIM KLOULECHAD: "Yeah it's matching, but the thing is they use a water cooler, instead of frozen, so we can't really go inside and pull all the fish out, because it would destroy the texture of the meat". 

18:53

SCHWARTZ: After searching the ship, the boarding party finds no evidence of illegal fishing.

19:12

Police depart

Music

19:19

SCHWARTZ: The crew members are left to tend to their lines and we return to the Remeliik to go looking for a bamboo raft which the crew spotted earlier.

19:24

Fish aggregating device

It's a FAD - a fish aggregating device - and Captain Albert Yangowemau plans to destroy it. 

19:36

Police burn device

"So it's likely this has been set by a boat which will be coming back to set a net around it?"

CAPTAIN ALBERT YANGOWEMAU: "Yes".

19:46

SCHWARTZ: "Do you find many of them?"

CAPTAIN ALBERT YANGOWEMAU: "Yeah, most of the time - every trip we go out

19:53

Captain

we sink... we destroy some FADs".

18:58

Burning FAD

SCHWARTZ: The raft is well-made and hard to break up. So the crew douse it with fuel. It's a long process, and as we head back to port, the burnt shell is still bobbing on the waves.

20:01

Schwartz to camera on boat

"There's no doubting the dedication of the crew of the Remeliik, but this is just one ship patrolling a vast Palauan sea which at any given time has 40 or 50 fishing boats in it, and of those, at least a few would almost certainly have convictions for prior fishing violations."

20:20

Schwartz onboard Remeliik with Kloulechad

As far as Officer Kloulechad is concerned, the sooner Palau adopts the President's plan to ban foreign fishing, the better.

20:41

Purse seine fishing

He's worried not just about the long-liners but the purse seiners which use circular nets to ensnare and scoop up huge quantities of tuna.

20:53

JIM KLOULECHAD: "If the purse seiners is getting all the juveniles and all these long-line fishing boats are getting the adult ones, I mean

21:08

Kloulechad

who's left behind? I mean, who has the power to eliminate any fish in the water?"

21:16

Bay

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "We're talking about a three to five year period".

21:24

President Remengesau

SCHWARTZ: "So five years from now, you would hope that there's no foreign fishing?"

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "That's the whole idea that we want to work on our legislation to address that".

21:29

Tourist boat/fishing boats

SCHWARTZ: But the President is likely to face a fight and not just from the foreign fishing fleets.

21:38

[at the port] "The foreign fishing industry has some powerful friends here,

21:46

Schwartz to camera at port

including a former Palauan President who now heads up one of the three large seafood export companies. His family's businesses also lease the land that the port sits on, and runs security both here and at the airport".

21:50

Fishing boat

Palau's 16 state governments rely heavily on their cut of the five million dollars in national fishing revenue. They won't want to give that up without a guaranteed alternative.

22:06

Tourists get on to boat

The President says an expanded tourism industry will plug any financial gaps and will provide far greater returns for Palau than a tuna industry geared to benefit foreign interests over Pacific nations. 

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "Ninety four per cent of the total value of the tuna

22:22

President Remengesau. Super:
Tommy Remengesau Jnr
President, Palau

is realised by the outside industry and only six percent is actually returned to the local government and to the people who are the resource owners".

22:43

Speed boat

SCHWARTZ: Part of the President's plan is to build a domestic commercial fishing industry, with access to one-fifth of Palau's waters.

22:57

View from boat on waterway

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "What it will do also is lessen the stress on the reef, because we also see that with the

23:08

President Remengesau

growing population of tourists and our own food security, the reefs are really stressed out to the max".

23:16

Fish processing

SCHWARTZ: The region's fishery boss applauds Palau's commitment to sustainability, but says it won't save the tuna industry. That can be salvaged only if all Pacific countries and fishing nations agree to cut the catch. They meet in December.

23:22

Prof Hurry. Super:
Glenn Hurry
Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission

PROFESSOR GLENN HURRY: "You're better off making a decision now that's a bit tough and a bit unpalatable, than make one in a disaster scenario in bloody three or five years' time".

23:43

Domestic fishing on waterway

Music

23:52

Kloulechad fishing with son

SCHWARTZ: Fishing is a way of life for Palauans. When marine policeman Jim Kloulechad is not on the Remeliik, he's out casting a net or line with his son, Oreall.

23:59

JIM KLOULECHAD: "When I'm not on the boat and I'm here, I'm teaching my son the basic way of fishing - you only get what you're going to eat".

SCHWARTZ: With bait in hand, they're off to hook a meal.

JIM KLOULECHAD: "It's something I have to teach my son - why we're doing it, why we're doing this conservation thing".

24:21

SCHWARTZ: Like fishermen the world over, Officer Kloulechad says it's getting harder to land a catch. He's hoping that will change once a foreign fishing ban is in place.

24:41

Music

24:55

JIM KLOULECHAD: "When we were little, like during the summertime we get to see a big school of tuna passing the island and they were really close, so we could take this boat and go and trawl for the big ones. Now it doesn't happen like that".

25:01

Oreall casts rod

SCHWARTZ: At the grand age of 11, even Oreall says he's seen a change.

25:17

Oreall

OREALL KLOULECHAD: "There used to be a lot of fish here when I was young, but now they're running out... fast". 

25:25

SCHWARTZ: "But he's got a bite today".

25:30

Oreall lands fish

JIM KLOULECHAD: "Oh that's a coral trout man. That's a good fish".

SCHWARTZ: A good fish, caught at a bad time. Spawning season - so it's released".

JIM KLOULECHAD: "They're having a baby now so

25:35

Kloulechads release fish

we cannot collect them. It's all in conservation. Throw it back in the water".

25:47

Underwater footage. Fish/Diver

Music

25:55

SCHWARTZ: Palau is nothing without its ocean. That's why it's trying to conserve as much sea life as possible. The country led the way on shark preservation and the President wants to do the same for sustainable fishing. As a keen spear-fisher, he has a vested interest.

"When you're finally through

26:04

President Remengesau

with being President how are you going to spend your days?"

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: " I'm going to truly be a full-time fisherman so I won't continue to claim that I will be a fisherman, but I will actually be a.... truly a living and practicing fisherman".

SCHWARTZ: "I think you said that last time we met nearly 20 years ago. Is it ever going to happen".

PRESIDENT TOMMY REMENGESAU JNR: "I'm still, I'm still ah... trying to get there". [laughing]

26:24

Underwater footage. Fish

26:49

Further Information

Government of Palau
President Tommy Remengesau Jnr.
Secretariat of the Pacific Community
Greenpeace 
Richard Brooks underwater photography

27:00

Credits

Reporter: Dominique Schwartz

Camera: Chris Taylor

Underwater camera: Richard Brooks

Additional vision: Greenpeace

Secretariat of the Pacific Community

Producer: Greg Wilesmith

Editor: Garth Thomas

Research: Bernadette Carreon

Bronwen Reed

Executive producer: Steve Taylor