#iccat

Pesca del tonno rosso: delegazione di pescatori del Cilento a Roma

Le direttive europee sulla pesca del tonno rosso stanno penalizzando i piccoli pescatori del Cilento. Un gruppo di loro incontrerà una delegazione del Parlamento Europeo. (more…)

EU, others: Catch plans for Bluefin tuna threaten recovery

(AP)—The European Union, Japan and other nations hunting for the eastern Atlantic Bluefin tuna are fearful that Turkey's unilateral decision to exceed catch limits agreed last year is threatening the stock recovery and the organization regulating its conservation.

Documents seen by The Associated Press and EU comments on Friday show that during an intense meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas early this week, delegates were angry at Turkey for announcing it would catch up to 73 percent more Bluefin than under an internationally agreed plan.

"Many expressed discontent at the decision to declare an autonomous allocation and the potential of Turkey's decision to undermine the recovery of the eastern Bluefin tuna stock and the Commission as a whole," the official report of the meeting said.

Environmental groups agree. "One government going beyond international agreements could be catastrophic for the recovery of this iconic species, and in fact catastrophic for ICCAT as a relevant management organization," said Amanda Nickson, director of global tuna conservation with The Pew Charitable Trusts.

ICCAT, which has 50 contracting parties from the United States to Japan and the 28-nation EU, has led efforts to manage the global stock of the species but has been struggling to turn around the decline of the fish which is a gastronomic delight in sushi bars around the globe.

The crisis is especially dire in the Mediterranean where Bluefin tuna has been caught since Roman times. It used to be commonplace for fishermen to catch tuna weighing up to 1,100 pounds in the Mediterranean. But as prices shot up over the past 30 years, industrial high-seas vessels have been roaming the seas looking for the dwindling supply.

The decline has bottomed out but ICCAT has found it difficult to set quotas to make the industry environmentally sustainable again, and last November's decision to raise the quotas in the Mediterranean Sea shocked conservationists, who said the move puts early signs of population recovery at risk.

Next year's quota for Mediterranean Bluefin tuna has been raised by 20 percent to 15,821 metric tons, with additional 20 percent increases planned for each of the following two years.

Read more here.

Since as far back as Phoenician times in the Straits of Gibraltar, the bluefin tuna has been cherished in the food industry by a wide variety of cultures. Today the flavorful fish is near extinction due to its overfishing in more recent years. Steven Teo, a biologist at the University of California at Davis and also a member of the team that discovered the transatlantic migrations of the bluefin tuna, bluntly calls it “a symbol of the myopic greed in some parts of the fishing industry.”

The bluefin tuna, also known as the northern bluefin or the giant bluefin, are native to the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and are now extinct in the Black Sea. They are enormous fish, reaching close to a thousand pounds and contend with the blue and black marlin as the largest bony fish. Their reputable size and strength, along with the darkest and fattiest flesh of any fish, contribute to the demand in the fish market, especially in Japan where they are used for sushi and sashimi. This overbearing demand has caused severe overfishing in the Atlantic.

Before 1960, the fisheries were relatively small and the population of the bluefin tunas didn’t show any obvious signs of danger – except for in the Black Sea where there were no restrictions to commercial fishing. Beginning in 1960 purse seines were introduced to the industry which had severe effects on the population of the tuna, as well as the rest of the ecosystem. These nets were able to catch dozens of fish at a time, including young fish who have yet to reproduce. Midway through the decade, the need for coordinated international management of highly migratory fish species in the Atlantic was realized and in May of 1966 the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas was signed (ICCAT).

The first regulatory measures for imposed for the bluefin tuna was a minimum size limit of 6.4 kilograms for fishing mortality, in order to reduce the number of juvenile tunas that were being killed without ever reproducing. During the next fifteen years the catches oscillated without a strict trend. Then, in the early 1990s the number of catches reported rapidly climbed to 53,000 tons.

New laws were implemented to limit the catches of small fish and penalties for exceeding quotas. A promotion for tagging and releasing programs began and a bluefin tuna documentation and reporting program faded into effect as well.

At the same time, tuna farming began in countries like Australia, Japan, Mexico, Italy and Spain. The farms raised mostly bluefin and aimed for a possibility to continue to raise and sell the fish without harming the population. Farming has yet to show any great difference in population. Tom Grasso, the director of marine conservation policy at World Wildlife Fund calls it a “really expensive way of not solving a problem-which is the over fishing of bluefin tuna.” WWF currently supports a worldwide ban on the fishing of bluefin tuna.

Just eight years ago in 2004 the catch report was 34,000 tons, which is 2,000 over the allowable catch level. Scientists at the ICCAT estimated numbers much greater than this, possibly 50,000 tons. This is just one example of many, at how the fishing industry is truly wrecking itself. By purposely misreporting statistics they are creating inaccurate numbers which is making it difficult for experts to know exactly what the population looks like at a given point. With bluefins being purchased for $736,000 in Japanese fish markets, local fishermen seem to be going to any extent to make bank. According to the Global Fishery Resources of Tuna and Tuna-Like Species a fisherman may receive from $40 to $50 per kilogram of bluefin tuna.

In the mid 2000’s the Atlantic bluefin tuna was categorized as “Overexploited” according to the status of stocks in the Global Fishery Resources Report. This is defined as “fishing above a level which is sustainable in the long term [with a risk of stock depletion/collapse] and no potential room for further sustainable increases in catches].”

The problem we’re facing is that the tuna fisheries continue to be profitable and the intensity of the fishing has yet to decrease because there have been no effective restraints by the fishery managements. Sushi and Sashimi is still highly sought after, especially in Japan where 80% of the landed bluefin tuna is consumed. Here’s the irony though: although Japan claims that bluefin is an integral part of their traditional food culture, sushi was never popularized as a prominent part of Japanese sushi until the late twenty-first century when the conveyor-belt sushi was introduced. After the Chambers and Associated petitioned against the lethal fishing by calling the fish a threatened species, the plan was rejected at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species due to countries like Japan who vetoed the idea, raking in something near seven billion dollars each year from the industry.

At this point the fishing of bluefin tuna in Massachusetts has dropped to fifteen percent under the allowed catch just because of the lack of fish. According to the ICCAT, the populations of bluefins has dropped ninety-seven percent in the past fifty years. This incredibly devastating number could soon be even higher after the oil spill in the Gulf, though those results likely won’t surface for a few more years. The Gulf of Mexico is one of two known spawning areas of the bluefin tuna and since these fish swim in the lower third of the ocean, they are in the area which is currently most affected by the oil spill. The results at this point can only be speculated, but if the spill wipes out almost an entire generation of these fish, those who predict that extinction will occur in 2012 might be right. Each generation of the bluefin tuna is vital to the stability of the current status. The fact that the National Marine Fisheries Service still gives out fishing licenses for the bluefin tuna is just ridiculous.