Observers at the annual International Convention on the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) say that delegates are about to flout the advice of their own scientists and continue fishing the endangered bluefin. Last month the convention’s department of research announced that the stock was depleted enough to justify banning international trade. A moratorium on catching bluefin tuna is widely regarded as essential for the survival of the species, but is being obstructed by the European Union’s delegation, according to sources.
Bluefin tuna from the eastern Atlantic spawn in the Mediterranean, supporting a 9,000-year-old fishing industry. The species is now in crisis, with 72 per cent of its numbers gone after four decades of mismanagement. The organisation in charge now has its last chance to retain control over the species that has earned an estimated £10 billion in the past decade.
A final decision is not expected until late Sunday evening, but observers are not optimistic. A proposal for a slowly implemented moratorium has been tabled by Japan and the US, but the EU’s representatives are leaning the other way.
“The EU are talking about the highest quotas they can get,” Willie Mackenzie, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace, said. “The EU delegation’s 64 members are mostly from the fishing industry.”
Sue Lieberman, director of the Pew Environment Group, also in Recife where the meetings are being held, agreed. “The biggest issue is the EU. We’re hearing that they are showing no flexibility. It’s high time the EU acted as the EU, not just representatives of the Spanish fishing fleet.”
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The spokesman for the European Commission Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries said Europe’s position was defendable. On Monday it announced that it was primarily concerned with over-capacity in Europe’s fleets, and trying to convince other nations to stick closer to scientific advice.
Forty-seven nations are represented at the convention. If they fail to decide on an emergency ban on fishing, they may relinquish control to the 178 nations that make up the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which will be more likely to place a ban on trading the Mediterranean bluefin when it meets in March next year.
More than three quarters of countries in Europe recently voted to support a trade ban of the bluefin at CITES but were blocked by Spain, Italy and France and three other Mediterranean nations involved in the controversial fishery.
According to the organisation’s scientific advisers, even a catch of 8,000 tonnes would only have a 50 per cent chance of the species recovering by 2023.
“If governments do anything less than what they’re saying the fate of the bluefin is only worth a coin toss,” said Ms Lieberman.
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Despite the advice, quotas of between 8,500 and 15,000 tonnes are likely to be set.
Experts warn that in the past there have been big differences between the advice, the allocation and the tonnage that is actually landed. In 2007 some 61,000 metric tonnes were caught, twice the catch limit allocated by ICCAT, and four times the level judged sustainable by its scientists. In 2008 a quota of 15,000 tonnes was recommended, 28,500 were allocated and more than 34,000 tonnes were declared caught.
Dr Sergei Tudela, of WWF, said he believed the latest estimates were well under the real catch.
“To accept these figures at face value we have to accept a huge reduction in the amount of illegal fishing over the previous year,” he said. “I just don’t see the evidence or the reasoning for this miraculous drop in illegal fishing, while there is abundant evidence that pirate fishing remains rampant.”
Dr Jane Lubchenco, head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, yesterday called for the strongest possible management measures to be put in place. “The status quo with respect to eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin is neither sustainable nor acceptable,” she said.
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If international trade were banned through CITES, it would be the first commercially harvested fish species to receive such protection, other than the less valuable markets for sturgeon and freshwater eel.
ICCAT was the first world fisheries management agency, formed in 1966 out of alarm over dramatic drops in the numbers of bluefin tuna.
“Since that time numbers have only gone down,” said Carl Safina, an ecologist. “They say they’re down 80 per cent from the 1970s. But by the 1960s they were already saying the numbers were down by half.”