The move -- 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 $2 billion (€1.5 billion) generated annually from tuna caught in their waters.
More than 85 percent of the revenues currently go to fishing companies and others based in the U.S., Japan, Taiwan and other Asian countries.
"The time has come for us to assert our right to claim our rightful, fair and equitable share from the harvesting of tuna stocks in the fishing grounds under our jurisdiction," said Johnson Toribiong, president of Palau and host of the one-day meeting of regional leaders on tuna in the capital, Koror.
The
