Protectors Of Bluefin Tuna Causing Species’ Demise
Established to protect Atlantic tuna, an international fisheries group has actually driven the bluefin tuna to the brink of extinction, environmentalists announced Thursday.
The night before a meeting in Brazil of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), an accusation was made by environmentalists saying that the group brazenly ignored the advice of its own scientists and has managed to drastically reduce the levels of bluefin tuna by setting fishing quotas, reported AFP.
"ICCAT has continually disregarded countless opportunities to do the right thing and secure the Atlantic bluefin tuna and guarantee the recovery of this species," Susan Lieberman, director of international policy at the Washington-based Pew Environment Group, told reporters.
Marine biologist Carl Safina, president of the Blue Ocean Institute that analyzes the way human behavior affects the ocean, said that ICCAT is "the poster child for not only failure which is demonstrable but cynicism and a real unwillingness to get serious, be professional and listen to what the science has to say.”
She went on to say, "The world’s first fisheries management agency formed out of concern for this one species, never followed their own science, never lived up to their mandate to manage for a sustainable yield."
Lieberman said that ICCAT has set higher quotas for decades for bluefin tuna that its own scientists have advised, and its short-term policies that favor fisherman over the long-term conservation of the species has led to it being jokingly referred to as “the International Conspiracy to Catch all Tuna.”
A number of governments systematically surpass the quotas set by ICCAT and let their industrial fleets over-fish the bluefin population.
This, on top of illegal fishing, has resulted in an 85 percent drop in the population in the eastern Atlantic and a 90 percent decrease in the western Atlantic, she said.
"The bluefin tuna will not be with us and certainly will be extinct if governments don’t do the right thing… and unless ICCAT says, ‘Enough is enough, it’s time for a zero quota; we’re going to put the brakes on this fishery," Lieberman said.
In order to rectify the situation with the bluefin tuna, it would have to be added on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) list of animals and plants most threatened with extinction, according to environmentalists.
Scientists with the ICCAT held meetings in Spain twice last month to discuss including the bluefin tuna on the CITES list, known as Appendix One.
Also, the fisheries management group, established in the late 1960s, is set to start a 10-day meeting in Recife, Brazil on Friday.
The ICCAT website states that its objective is to conserve "tuna and tuna-like species in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas."
Forty-eight countries in every region of the world are contracting parties to ICCAT.
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