Call for a ban on Bluefin in Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic

[jackdaniels]

The World Conservation Congress passed a motion calling for closure of the bluefin fishery until scientifically sound recovery plans are in place.
Catches are estimated to be about four times higher than scientists recommend.
Spain, which has the biggest quota for Mediterranean tuna, and Japan, the biggest consumer, voted in favour.
ICCAT which has regulated the bluefin fishery has done a disgraceful job.. they first recommended a catch of 15000 tons in 2006 and then allowed 30000 tons to be taken. Tis did not count an estimated 20000 tons of illegally caught fish.
The report put the blame firmly on the shoulders of Iccat's member nations which, it said, did not stamp down on illegal fishing, did not provide accurate catch data, and failed to implement proper monitoring arrangements for its fleets.
Spain which has always pushed for increased catches for its fleet dupported the ban this time.
The motion calls for Iccat to shorten the fishing season especially during the spawning months of May and June, establish protection zones around spawning sites and suspend fishing completely until member nations have begun to reduce the size of their fleets.

[jackdaniels]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7611636.stm

Interesting historical statement included in his disertation.

Pliny the Elder recommended eating tuna to treat ulcers, suggesting the neck, belly and throat as the finest pieces that must be eaten fresh even though "they cause severe fits of flatulence.

I never tried the neck or throat myself.

[jackdaniels]

Statement from Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator, Announcing Support for Listing Atlantic Bluefin Tuna on International Trade Endangered Species List
October 14, 2009




Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus).

High Resolution (Credit: NOAA)
The United States today announced that it will seek the strongest possible management for the conservation of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a fish which is in serious trouble.

This action has two components.

First, we are sending a clear and definitive statement to the international community that the status quo is not acceptable.

Over the past 40 years, the international body that manages bluefin tuna, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), has overseen a 72 percent decline in the adult population of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stock of bluefin tuna and an 82 percent decline in the adult population of the western Atlantic stock.

In recent years, the countries that fish the eastern stock, which spawns in the Mediterranean, have done so at two to three times the sustainable level, causing a significant and rapid decline in the last decade. The status of the western stock, which spawns in the Gulf of Mexico and is fished primarily off the North American coast, has recently stabilized due to the establishment of well-enforced, science-based quotas.

A sustained lack of science-based management for the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stock of bluefin tuna, and concerns about slow recovery in the west, have brought us to this point. As a member in ICCAT, the United States calls for strong and definitive action at the November 2009 meeting in Brazil. This includes establishing management measures that end overfishing such as setting responsible science-based quotas, stronger enforcement of these quotas, and closures during spawning periods.

Second, the United States strongly supports Monaco’s proposal to list Atlantic bluefin tuna under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to prohibit international trade of the species. The United States will consider amending or withdrawing support for the Monaco proposal if ICCAT adopts significantly strengthened management and compliance measures.

Improving international fishery management and ending illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing are high priorities for the United States government, Congress, commercial and recreational fishermen, and conservationists.

[livetofishnj]

The World Conservation Congress passed a motion calling for closure of the bluefin fishery until scientifically sound recovery plans are in place.
Catches are estimated to be about four times higher than scientists recommend.
Spain, which has the biggest quota for Mediterranean tuna, and Japan, the biggest consumer, voted in favour.
ICCAT which has regulated the bluefin fishery has done a disgraceful job.. they first recommended a catch of 15000 tons in 2006 and then allowed 30000 tons to be taken. Tis did not count an estimated 20000 tons of illegally caught fish.
The report put the blame firmly on the shoulders of Iccat's member nations which, it said, did not stamp down on illegal fishing, did not provide accurate catch data, and failed to implement proper monitoring arrangements for its fleets.
Spain which has always pushed for increased catches for its fleet dupported the ban this time.
The motion calls for Iccat to shorten the fishing season especially during the spawning months of May and June, establish protection zones around spawning sites and suspend fishing completely until member nations have begun to reduce the size of their fleets.

That's great, wonderful even...

Love to see what in there prevents these fleets from moving from Spain to the north african countries that couldn't give two shits about ICCAT. You cannot get rid of the pressure on the fish without removing the demand on them. It's like drugs, if people still want them then people will find a way. I'm not offering a solution, don;t have one but this seems like another well-placed but ineffective measure. Legit countries may hold to it but there are plenty of flags and ports which will allow the fishing to merely shift offload locations.

Unfortunately the only way to cut off the head is to go ahead with the CITES listing and prevent the import. Then you are mainly working with countries that will abide by the conventions and international pressure- to some extent. The problem however is that means that the west Atlantic fishery- which is managed at or near a sustainable level through the strict regs that we have abided by- is also shut out. That would leave a lot of honest and conversationally oriented guys around here out of luck too and that's not right either. Those who have worked and suffered to improve things while the med and east Atlantic get raped don't deserve to punished alongside but it might be the only way.

Long and short, I'm not all that excited. This may not be nearly as effective as it's being made out in some circles.

[Roddy Hays]

Ultimately, this will mean nothing unless armed forces get involved. The northern countries in the area - Spain, France, Greece and others - have a modicum of civilization in their genes and will maybe submit grumpily to such a ban.

Unfortunately there are too many other countries, some not even part of ICCAT, who fish the same Mediterranean, illegally, with helicopters, chase-boats, surveillance equipment, satellite technology and the rest. They kill people right now for attempting to stop them - nothing here to suggest that will stop them in the future. The Mafia is heavily involved and so is Gaddafi. The Libyan boats are probably the worst.

And because of this, the northern countries previously mentioned will not, ultimately, agree to anything without better policing. Better to instigate a far-reaching mercury scare, methinks. That wouldn't be difficult to arrange, surely ????

[SJ-Rick]

But Roddy, the tuna alone are no good to Gaddafi or the Mafia, they need a fluid market to turn them into what they really want, CASH. A CITES listing would greatly hinder the movement of tuna. Would it stop it totally? Of course not. Bit it would be a significant game changer.

As a side note, one of the funniest things I ever heard was the Libyan ICCAT Commissioner asking to have Hogarth's Carolina drawl translated into English he could understand.

Rick Weber

[Roddy Hays]

Rick, you're right of course - a CITES listing would go some way towards a result, but I think the problem is that too many people's livelihoods and too many countries' inclinations towards national maritime honour will get in the way. I cannot, for example, ever see the Spanish and French Mediterranean tuna fleets ever giving up the battle to keep their involvement alive.

I've been there and fished amongst some of these people, and nice enough fellas as they are, they all sleep with a knife under the pillow and a photo of their grandfather with a gaff in their wallet. Memories and pride go back generations.

A better bet perhaps would be to impose trade sanctions on Japan. The vast majority of the giant catch goes there, and the protection of the breeding stock should be our first priority. Another option would be to make the "farms" and pens illegal. I can still see a strictly policed harvest as a viable alternative to a mass closure.

The problem overall though, is that even though most or probably ALL of these nations accept that the species is endangered, no one will do anything until they can be certain that everyone else will adhere to the rules. It's like a school class of unruly delinquents. Each nation is going to have to take the ultimate responsibility for keeping order amongst its own fishermen, and while I can see many so doing, the rogues amongst them whose leaders benefit directly will never give up.

The sad thing is that the US (who manage quite nicely to live with closures and seasons - think west coast fisheries, for example), will be the nation who would willingly lead the way through experience, but they will also ultimately take most of the flak for its failures, through no fault of its own. I would also hazard a guess that maybe 70% or better of the ICCAT commissioners take back-handers in some form or another, and that doesn't help matters, either.

[Roddy Hays]

I posted this some years ago after laboriously copying it from the real paper. It shows a grasp of the overview of the industry in the European area. Re-reading it today still leaves me shaking my head.
______________________________________________

From the Teleraph Magazine, June 11th, 2005, United Kingdom

Profit and net loss

When fishermen themselves demand tougher fishing quotas, you know a species is in trouble. Charles Clover reports on how the high demand for bluefin tuna has left both the fish and a 3,000-year-old way of catching them on the brink of extinction

At sea near Cape Trafalgar off the Costa de la Luz a battle is about to commence, an unequal contest between man and fish that has changed little in 3,000 years. The first sign is the crescent-shaped fin that breaks the surface of the rectangle of water enclosed by the 10 wooden barges, that make up the almadraba, the trap of anchored nets and floats. A muscular swirl is followed by a splash, which is itself followed by another until the water is white with foam. The bluefin tuna, heading for the Straits of Gibraltar as they return from their Atlantic migration to the warm waters of the Mediterranean to spawn, have discovered there is no escape and have begun to thrash around in a frenzy.

Forty fishermen stand and watch as the net is hauled up using hemp ropes and blocks rigged to short masts. The sight of so many men in wooden boats is so reminiscent of the age of sail that I am momentarily distracted by the thought of Nelson's last great battle, which was fought in this bay. But then the waiting figures in orange and blue oilskins spring into action. Seizing hand gaffs and boathooks, they guide, impale and skilfully haul the giant tunas aboard. The decks of the barges flow red as the wounded tuna flap out their lives in the hold. The air fills with salt spray and flecks of blood.

An adult bluefin tuna can weigh 600kg but most of the ones caught this day are about 250kg - and it takes three men and great skill to haul a single one into the barge. Some of the fishermen leap into the net, now shallow enough for them to stand in, to guide the drowning, disorientated tuna to the gaffs. The bluefin is the zenith of evolution among fish. It can accelerate faster than a Porsche, swim at 60km an hour, produce millions of eggs and live for 20 years. The extraordinary bursts of energy of which it is capable are possible only because it warms its blood through a heat-exchanger. The same heat-exchanger also means that the dead flesh spoils quickly, so within minutes of the catch while a few of the tuna's tails are still drumming on the boards of the barges, the ice boat has pulled alongside and men are shovelling a thin layer of flaked ice over their bloody gun-metal and silver bodies. Then lines are thrown aboard and the barges are towed into Barbate de Franco harbour where the tuna are weighed and frozen.

The 97 tuna caught today in the almadraba are all mature adult fish. Fishing with traditional, fixed and selective gear is as sustainable an activity as you can imagine. Only fish that swim near the coast get caught, and only large adult ones, as the 7,300 metres of net which guide the tuna into the almadraba have wide, 90cm panels that allow any smaller tuna to escape. The trap takes two months to set and fishes from mid-May to mid-July. Working the almadraba is a labour-intensive, physically demanding job, but one popular with fishermen because it is over by 11 in the morning.

Tuna trapping has remained the same in essentials since the Phoenicians strung nets between the islands in the straits 1,000 years before the birth of Christ. Or when the Romans dried the tuna as portable protein to sustain their legions in battle. Nine kilometres nearer to Tarifa, on the windswept sands of Zahara de los Atunes, the 17th-century writer Cervantes stayed in the castle, drank wine, ate tuna, flirted with the women and wrote with affection about the scoundrels who fished in the almadraba there. And tuna was once so numerous that the fish could be caught in almadrabas reached from the shore.

In the Hotel Gran Sol in Zahara they serve “atun alinado” as tapas, slices of bluefin salted for three months and preserved in oil. If you order tuna salad for lunch you will get cooked bluefin tuna – “atun rojo” or red tuna as it is called locally - not the tropical variety from a tin. At the Bar Ropiti round the corner, you can order bluefin tuna flesh and roe, both dried, “carpaccio” of tuna (raw with a covering of oil, to which you add lemon), or grilled tuna neck-steaks, fatty but delicious. In the Mediterranean tradition - or the Atlantic one, for here we are on Spain's Atlantic coast - tuna is almost always cooked, often with characteristic vegetables such as peppers and tomatoes.

Yet most tuna caught today, even in the almadraba, goes to Japan, which has a taste for eating bluefin raw. The best cuts of bluefin, eaten as sushi or sashimi, are like Aberdeen Angus grazed on Argentine pampas. I have tried it myself, as sashimi with wasabi paste in a cafe beside Tokyo's Tsukiji market, where a 250kg fresh bluefin goes for £3,000 to £6,800 at auction, a tenth of what they used to, but still more than the £1,500 it is worth in Europe. The reason for the drop in price is that the insatiable Japanese market for raw tuna has spawned the practice of tuna `penning' - rounding up thousands of tons of juvenile Mediterranean tunas and fattening them in cages. Meanwhile the market continues to grow: it now extends to Japanese restaurants outside Japan (one of today's tuna is going to Japanese restaurants in London). This demand has brought the Mediterranean bluefin tuna to the verge of commercial extinction.

The catastrophe the bluefin is now facing is best illustrated in the almadrabas’ catches over the past six years. Marta Crespo, the glamorous director general of the company that runs them, tells me that the almadrabas caught 5,000 bluefin tuna in 1999. The following year they caught 2,000. Last year the figure was less than 900. Crespo says that if the EU does not do something quickly to stop the overfishing, this way of life will disappear within the next few years. The tuna pens in which the juvenile tuna are caught are supplied by a fleet of high-tech vessels. These use fast launches to set their purse-seine nets around the tuna shoals, then winch the net closed with drawstrings like purses. These vessels are mostly French-owned and have been renewed with EC subsidies over the past 10 years. The tuna are rounded up, then transferred to cages which are slowly towed to coastal areas all round the Mediterranean. The purse-seiners are equipped with the latest technology, such as forward-ranging sonars, and are guided to the shoals by spotter helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft (aircraft based at Spanish airfields move to Oran, Algeria, in the summer to avoid a spotting ban imposed for the sake of the tuna in the season's main month of June), and, as Crespo tells me, in one haul can catch the same number of individual tuna as the almadrabas catch all season.

The legal minimum weight size for tuna is 1Okg, although scientists believe that this is widely flouted. Certainly, the tuna the purse-seiners' catch are often so small that they have not yet spawned. And the big ones they catch do not spawn at all, for the tuna `farms', as they are termed, have not actually learnt how to domesticate or breed from the tuna. The large tuna are fattened up in pens until the content of fat in their flesh reaches the premium level rewarded by the Japanese market. This farmed tuna has now created a middle market between the wild tuna that has not spawned, which has always attracted the best price, and the tuna caught after spawning which have lower-quality flesh. The small ones go to supply a ready new market for tuna steaks in France.

The tuna-penning business was developed in Australia with the southern bluefin tuna, a different species. In the Mediterranean, it has gone from nothing a decade ago to something that is flourishing in Malta, Spain, Turkey, Croatia and Sicily and is in the process of starting up in Libya, Greece, Cyprus and Morocco. Somehow - it is not clear exactly how - many tuna farms operating in the Mediterranean qualify for EU aquaculture subsidies, even though they do not breed tuna and are in direct competition with existing, more sustainable fisheries. Since 1994 Spain has paid out £4.4 million in subsidies to tuna farms. And in 2003 Mediterranean tuna farms caged 21,000 tons of tuna compared with virtually nothing five years before.

The conservation organisation WWF says the authority responsible for regulating the fishery, the Madrid-based International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), has been slow to accept that what it once dismissed as a `post harvesting' practice is actually driving the industry. Meanwhile its policy of laissez-faire has favoured purse-seining above all other methods of fishing.

The effect is being felt by traditional fishermen all along the Spanish coast. Carboneras, on the coast of Almeria, has a fleet of 40 long-line vessels which fish with lines up to 30km long for tuna and swordfish. Though far from the most sustainable form of fishing, long-lining with baited hooks is still more selective than purse- seining because it tends to catch larger fish. The landings are also more easily counted.

The long-line fishermen have little love for the French boats. The tuna farms have glutted the market - one fisherman tells me that a tuna caught by line used to fetch €35 per kilogram, now it fetches only nine. One skipper, Antonio Moreno Hernandez, says that the purse-seiners often ignored their lines, consequently destroying them, even though they are marked with floats that are lit up at night. The long-line fishermen in Carboneras all believe the EU should be doing more to control the quantity of fish the purse-seiners catch. Some, though, are reluctant to give their names as they have to sell their tuna to the same company which handles the penned tuna, Ricardo Fuentes.

Further north again, at Garrucha, Juan Cervantes, the head of Spain's cofradias (the fishermen's associations), has a file three inches thick of correspondence about the farms, which his members oppose. He says the tuna are all now in the farms. `I don't know where the French vessels go to catch them. There are none here.'

But Cervantes is not just concerned about the bluefin tuna. He says other fish sense the presence of predators and will not go near the cages. The tuna have to be fed 21kg of fish to produce one kilo of tuna - so there is concern about the Mediterranean's declining anchovy stocks which are being rounded up to feed them. And, as with salmon farms, much of the feed ends up on the sea bed, causing pollution. The rest of the feed for the farms comes from abroad, frozen, and, according to a report for WWF, there is a danger of introducing exotic diseases.

The greatest number of tuna farms anywhere in the Mediterranean is at Cartagena, in Murcia, a couple of hours north-east of Carboneras. You can see the pens below the cliffs covered in wild thyme which were mined first by the Carthaginians, then the Romans for lead, zinc and silver. There is an almadraba here, too, now disused. Pedro Garcia, the head of the conservation agency Association of Naturalists for the South East, takes us to see the cages in the sea, just over the hill from the La Manga Club, one of the developments built exclusively for tourists which, to his exasperation, are devouring what remains of the Costa Blanca's native coastal forest. In Cartagena harbour we try to talk to the tuna farmers on a supply vessel working for the company Tuna Graso. They say we have to speak to their office, and when we do, as Pedro Garcia predicted, no one is available.

Garcia takes me to eat fried cod's roe, octopus and red tuna with peppers at a restaurant on Cartagena's harbour. Over dinner he talks of the Roman practice of steeping tuna entrails in pots of oil to make garum, a substance overpoweringly strong for modern tastes. Then he tells me of the difficulties he has had with tuna farmers setting up their pens in ecologically sensitive areas and without the prior environmental assessments required by EU law. `If the bluefin was a mammal not a fish,' he says, `people would say, "Oh my God, we are destroying it, it is becoming extinct," but because it is a fish they do not care.'

The Atlantic population of bluefin is now listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as endangered, the same status as the panda.

The first moves to make the bluefin subject to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which regulates trade in, among other things, ivory and caviar - for which Japan is a major market - were taken in 1992. The proposal was made by Sweden, which once had a run of giant tuna off its coast, as Britain did in the North Sea in the 1930s. This was seen off by self-interested lobbying from the United States and Japan. But it can be only a matter of time before an attempt is made again.

In the meantime ICCAT - once again - disappointed conservation bodies, led by WWF, at a meeting in New Orleans last November by leaving quotas for the east Atlantic stock (the one which spawns in the Mediterranean) at 32,000 tons, when ICCAT's own scientists recommended a maximum of 26,000 tons. In the process ICCAT ignored uncertainties over the number of tuna actually transferred to pens, and the inadequacy of the returns made by countries such as Libya and Turkey, which were not formerly ICCAT members. The meeting postponed any cut in quotas until after a new stock assessment is complete some time next year.

ICCAT has also yet to confront scientific evidence that the Atlantic bluefin population can no longer be separated into distinct management units for the eastern stock and the western one: some tuna are now known to migrate from one side of the Atlantic to another. And there seems to be a significant population that stays in mid Atlantic in the breeding season.

Why, you may ask, does so little happen so slowly at ICCAT? The politics of bluefin tuna are not edifying. ICCAT is mostly a college of vested interests. Of the key players, France has the purse-seine vessels, Spain has the farms, as does Italy, where many are controlled by the mafia. The US has its own east coast sport fishery. And Japan has the market and its own long-line fleet. An EU spokesman told me that it pushed hard at the New Orleans meeting to put measures in place to control the fattening of tuna; the sites now have to be licensed and each member state must have a sampling system to check the size of the fish in the cages. (Japan, which is waking up to the problem, had said it would not import unless these measures were in place).

The key question, however, of setting a sustainable catch quota for the world's most endangered tuna was postponed until next year. The ICCAT process has many sad parallels with the International Whaling Commission, a whalers' club which stood by and allowed the great whales to be hunted to the verge of extinction. The pace of the managers' decision-making is failing to keep up with the bluefin. But Marta Crespo is not giving up without a fight. The sight of a fisherman, and a woman at that, asking for tougher quotas is unusual, but it is a sign of the times. Crespo has appealed to Madrid and to the EU for help on behalf of the almadrabas. She asks why the US has a 20-year plan for restoring its bluefin stock to its former level while the EU simply goes on conniving in the unsustainable slaughter. She points out that the EU bears a large share of the blame for setting the new quotas, 18,000 tons of which were awarded to itself.

The EU, she says, has done effectively nothing to protect a form of fishing that has existed in balance with nature since the dawn of European civilisation - and which might therefore be considered civilised - from rampant market forces and opportunism.

It seems a justifiable accusation.

'The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat' (Ebury) by Charles Clover is available from Telegraph Books Direct for
£7.99 plus £2.25p&p (0870-155 7222)
______________________________________________

Clover's book should be a staple volume for any discerning fisherman's library, by the way. And no, I don't know the fella, and I don't get a commision !

[Roddy Hays]

From the BBC this morning:
_______________________

The body responsible for managing Atlantic bluefin tuna has decided not to suspend the fishery in response to concerns over dwindling stocks.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat) instead decided to lower the annual catch quota by about one third.
Conservation groups said the decision would encourage illegal fishing.
Iccat scientists said recently that bluefin numbers were at about 15% of pre-industrial-fishing levels.

They also said that drastic limits on fishing now would facilitate the growth of a more profitable industry in years to come, as stocks became more plentiful.

A number of conservation groups attending the Iccat meeting in Recife, Brazil said that delegations - led by the EU - had put short-term commercial concerns before the longer-term interests of both tuna and fishermen.
"Since its inception, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas has been driven by short-term commercial fishing interests, not the conservation ethic implied by its name," said Sue Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group.

"Only a zero catch limit could have maximised the chances that Atlantic bluefin tuna could recover to the point where the fishery could exist in the future."

However, the European Commission - which represents the EU - described the outcome as "strong".

"It is a clear sign that the international community acknowledges the scale and magnitude of the problem and is ready and willing to work constructively with scientists, environmentalists and the industry to find the best possible compromise that will ensure the sustainable exploitation of this fragile stock and the viability of the industry concerned," it said in a statement.

The Commission also noted that the option of a moratorium remains on the table "in case new assessments show... there is a serious threat of fishery collapse".

Illegal stimulant
The new quota allows 13,500 tonnes of bluefin to be caught next year in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, down from 19,950 tonnes.
The fishing season will also be shortened by one month for purse seine ships, which use nets to encircle and trap shoals of the lucrative fish, often when they are spawning.

However, the size of the quota is only one of the issues that has seen bluefin tuna numbers tumble over the last few decades.

Some countries, notably in southern Europe, have simply exceeded their annual quotas, while illegal and unreported catches are estimated to add a further 30% to official numbers.

As stocks and quotas decline, vessel owners face the choice between keeping their expensive ships in port, or fishing ilegally.

"This... will lead to individual vessel quotas that are too low to economically sustain fishing activities," said Xavier Pastoor, executive director of the Madrid-based conservation group Oceana.

"This will definitely encourage under-reporting of catches and illegal fishing."
Most European governments back a recent proposal from Monaco to restrict trade in bluefin under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The proposal will be tabled at the CITES meeting in March.
Last month, Iccat's scientific advisors concluded that the notable decline from the "natural" level - before the era of industrialised fishing - would justify a ban.

But some countries are keen to keep management of commercial fish species within fisheries management organisations such as Iccat.
According to the Singapore-based Straits Times, an un-named Japanese fisheries official welcomed the meeting's outcome, arguing that it would help "control the fish population under Iccat, not anything else".

The US said it would consider whether to back the CITES bid after reviewing the outcome of this Iccat meeting, which it viewed as the organisation's "last chance" to implement effective management for bluefin.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

[000's]

Its like everything else, political BULL$HIT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!