By Michael Perry

SYDNEY, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Pacific island states called on Monday for a 30 percent cut in tuna catches in the South Pacific by China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States in order to save their fisheries.

The Pacific states, which include Australia, said the annual Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting in Busan, South Korea, should back a plan to cut bigeye and yellowfin tuna catches by a third over the next three years.

"As owners of the tuna resource, Pacific islands are committed to cooperation through the WCPFC to manage bigeye and yellowfin tuna," said Theofanes Isamu, chair of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency.

"We are concerned that bigeye tuna is subject to overfishing and yellowfin tuna is fully exploited," Isamu said in a statement on Monday.

Western and Central Pacific tuna stocks are the largest in the world and account for more than half the tuna consumed.

The WCPFC meeting in Busan, Dec 7-12, is considering a plan by its chairman to dramatically cut tuna catches in the Pacific, in line with cuts in Atlantic and Mediterranean catches, and to implement other measures to save the tuna species.

A decline in bluefin stocks has increased demand for the bigeye tuna, which is fished in the Indian and Atlantic oceans and the Western and Central Pacific.

Worldwide stocks of bigeye tuna, a prime source for Japanese restaurants serving sushi and sashimi around the world, are on the verge of collapse from overfishing, conservationists say.

SHORTEN FISHING SEASON In November, the European Union and nations such as Russia, Japan and South Korea that fish the Atlantic and Mediterranean, cut bluefin tuna quotas by 30 percent to 19,950 tonnes in 2010.

The EU Commission said the agreement would shorten the fishing season by four months, freeze fishing capacity at 2007-2008 levels and help crack down on illegal fishing.

But environmental groups said the new limits were inadequate and would not stop a sharp decline in the species.

The Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency represents 17 of the 32 nations in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.

Isamu said Pacific islands accounted for just $200 million worth of tuna from their fisheries, while foreign nations fishing in the same waters totalled over $1 billion.

"We need to use our tuna resources for employment, income and food security and to increase our local profits from tuna to develop our local economies," Isamu said.

The WCPFC will also consider banning long line fishing vessels from throwing juvenile fish back to sea, stationing observers on all tuna boats, close the high seas to tuna boats for three months a year, and ban the use of fish-attracting ocean buoys and floats inside island exclusive economic zones.

The Pacific states implemented such bans from June 15, 2008. In February the island nation Kiribati created the world's largest protected marine reserve, a California-sized watery wilderness covering 410,500 square km (158,500 square miles), to preserve tuna spawning grounds and coral reef biodiversity.

Environmental group Greenpeace said decades of over-exploitation has reduced some Pacific tuna stocks to just 15 percent and European fishing firms are now chasing tuna in the Pacific after tuna stocks fell in the Atlantic.

Greenpeace Pacific activist Josua Turaganivalu said the lives and economies of Pacific Islanders and nations are in peril as overfishing depletes the two key tuna stocks.

"The game for global tuna stocks is not over yet. The WCPFC has a last chance to ensure the bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks do not face the same fate as bluefin tuna, which is now endangered...," Turaganivalu said. (Editing by Bill Tarrant)

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