27 Nov 2008 - Yellowfin
tuna and bigeye tuna fisheries in the western
and central Pacific also face collapse if
a forthcoming management meeting doesn't
dramatically change the way they are harvested,
WWF warned today.
The call follows this
week's disastrous decision by the International
Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic
Tunas (ICCAT) which discarded recommendations
from its own scientists and a high level
internal review to continue with what the
review labelled “a travesty of fisheries
management” widely regarded as “an international
disgrace”.
“We have to face the
possibility that fishing nations will drive
the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries
Commission (WCPFC) will come up with a similar
outcome when it meets in Busan, Korea, in
December,” said Peter Trott, Fisheries Program
Manager for WWF-Australia.
“With tuna, it seems
we are just not learning – we have lost
the fisheries of the North Sea bluefin,
the southern Bluefin, the West Atlantic
bluefin collapsed and is failing to recover
and the Mediterranean Bluefin is now well
on its way to collapse with rampant legal
and illegal overfishing allowed to go on.”
In 2006 scientists estimated
that overfishing of bigeye tuna, on the
IUCN Red List as “vulnerable” since 1996,
was occurring in the western and central
Pacific, with a high probability it had
been occurring since 1997. They have also
warned that urgent action needed to be taken
on overfishing of yellowfin tuna in the
region.
“This is not just a
warm and fuzzy call to preserve a magnificent
open ocean species, it’s about preserving
the world’s most valuable tuna fisheries
with a landed value of close to US$4 billion
in 2007 and a market value of US$6-8 billion
every year,” said Trott.
“It’s a fishery that
adds considerably to the economies of many
of the developing Pacific Island nations
in the region and to the livelihoods of
millions in the region known as the Coral
Triangle.”
The future of the tuna
fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific
Fisheries will be decided at its commission
meeting during December 8 -12 this year.
For the first time the
commission will seriously consider management
measures to reduce the take of bigeye and
yellowfin tuna by 30 per cent. These measures
include closing large parts of the fishery
to purse seiners and the banning of fish
attractant devices from July to September
every year.
“It’s a reflection of
how dramatic the situation has become that
the Commission has got to this point,” Mr
Trott said.
“It’s beyond environmental
concerns, it is about commercial self-preservation.”
WWF-Australia strongly
supports the call for these closures from
July to September but also wants the commission
to ramp up catch documentation methods.
“Scientists have been
calling for large reductions in bigeye tuna
catch for over a decade,” Mr Trott said.
“But on past performance
the Commission is, at best, slow to respond
to such advice and at worst shows little
spine when it comes to standing up to the
pressure from fishing nations who continue
to decimate tuna stocks.”
“Such wavering could
lead to the commercial extinction of the
bigeye and yellowfin tuna fishery in the
Western and Central Pacific if effective
management action isn’t adopted at this
year’s Commission meeting.”
Improved catch documentation
can also identify the size of the illegal
tuna catch in the region which is estimated
to in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Timely documentation of the legal catch
can be measured against fish sold at markets
and used to determine how much illegal tuna
is being taken.
“If the Commission doesn’t
move fast on restoring stocks and preventing
illegal and unregulated fishing, it will
directly impact the viability of the region’s
tuna fisheries, the economies of developing
countries and the cost and availability
of tuna for every consumer in the very near
future,” Mr Trott said.
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Tuna commission comes
up with "a disgrace, not a decision"
24 Nov 2008 - Marrakech,
Morocco - The commission tasked with preventing
a collapse of the Mediterranean bluefin
tuna fishery today opted for catch quotas
still far higher than its own scientists
recommend and leaving industrial fleets
free to scoop up tuna at the height of its
spawning period.
The International Commission
for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT),
meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, for the past
week, brushed aside its own review’s description
of its management of the bluefin fishery
as “an international disgrace” to endorse
a total allowable catch (TAC) of 22,000
tonnes for next year.
ICCAT’s own scientists
had recommended a TAC ranging 8,500 to 15,000
tonnes per year, warning there were real
risks of the fishery collapsing otherwise.
The scientists also urged a seasonal closure
during the fragile spawning months of May
and June, while today’s outcome allows industrial
fishing in practice up to 20 June.
“This is not a decision,
it is a disgrace which leaves WWF little
choice but to look elsewhere to save this
fishery from itself,” said Dr Sergi Tudela,
head of WWF Mediterranean’s fisheries programme,
speaking from Marrakech.
“Any alternative is
preferable to an organization which boasts
of its respect for science but where in
a decade catches have gone from twice to
four times the scientific recommendations,
with massive legal and illegal overfishing.
It is clear that the only thing to slow
the fishery with ICCAT at the helm is running
out of fish.”
The European Union drove
today’s decision, supported by Morocco,
Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria and later
joined by Japan.
Japan had initially
been party to a US, Canada, Mexico, Norway,
Iceland and Brazil proposal, supported by
a brace of developing nations, to fix the
allowed catch at the upper levels recommended
by scientists and closing the fishery for
the full spawning period.
The debate has been
marred by allegations of the European Commission
threatening developing state members with
trade retaliations should they support lower
catch limits and extended closed seasons,
with the names of some nations appearing
and disappearing from the more scientifically-based
proposals.
“ICCAT’s string of successive
failures leaves us little option now but
to seek effective remedies through trade
measures and extending the boycott of retailers,
restaurants, chefs and consumers,” Dr Tudela
said.
WWF has been urging a suspension of the
out-of-control fishery, an option endorsed
by the recent World Conservation Congress
and recommended by ICCAT’s own internal
high-level review.
The world’s largest
bluefin tuna trader, Mitsubishi, signalled
earlier in November that it would “reassess”
its “involvement in this business” should
ICCAT continue to be unable to sustainably
manage the fishery.
“WWF will also actively
push for a listing under the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in the hope
that stringent trade controls tied explicitly
to the survival of the species will turn
around the half-hearted attempt at fisheries
management shown here by ICCAT and especially
its European contingent.”
CITES next meets in
Doha in January 2010 with submissions on
listings required by August 2009.
“Today’s outcome is a recipe for economic
as well as biological bankruptcy with the
European Union squarely to blame,” said
Dr Tudela.
“Bluefin consumption
in the main consumer market of Japan is
expected to drop from 18,000 tonnes due
to the economic crisis, with around 30,000
tonnes of frozen bluefin already in Hong
Kong and Japan and additional unknown amounts
in other Asian countries and in freezer
ships.
“Our industry sources
also tell us that there are 7,000 tonnes
of illegally fished tuna in fattening cages
across the Mediterranean that nobody wants
to buy.”
The moratorium option,
which the scientific panel said would lead
to the quickest recovery in bluefin stock
and the best future prospects for fulfilling
ICCAT’s charter of delivering a long-term
sustainable fishery, was not even given
consideration by the commission in Marrakech
despite increasing support for this option
from European fishermen.
+ More
Sea levels set to rise
faster than expected
27 Nov 2008 - Geneva,
Switzerland: Even warming of less than 2°C
might be enough to trigger the loss of Arctic
sea ice and the meltdown of the Greenland
Ice Sheet, causing global sea levels to
rise by several metres.
Ahead of next week’s
meeting of governments in Poznan, Poland
for UN climate talks WWF analysis of the
latest climate science comes to the dire
conclusion that humanity is approaching
the last chance to keep global warming below
the danger threshold of 2°C.
”The latest science
confirms that we are now seeing devastating
consequences of warming that were not expected
to hit for decades,” said Kim Carstensen,
WWF Global Climate Initiative leader.
“The early meltdown
of ice in the Arctic and Greenland may soon
prompt further dangerous climate feedbacks,
accelerating warming faster and stronger
than forecast.
“Responsible politicians
cannot dare to waste another second on delaying
tactics in the face of these urgent warnings
from nature.
“The planet is now facing
a new quality of change, increasingly difficult
to adapt to and soon impossible to reverse.
“Governments in Poznan
must agree to peak and decline global emissions
well before 2020 to give people reasonable
hope that global warming can still be kept
within limits that prevent the worst.
“In addition to constructive
discussions in Poznan we need to see signals
for immediate action.”
The CO2 storage capacity
of oceans and land surface – the Earth’s
natural sinks – has been decreasing by 5
per cent over the last 50 years. At the
same time, manmade CO2 emissions from fossil
fuels have been increasing – four times
faster in this decade than in the previous
decade.
WWF is urging governments
to use the Poznan talks for an immediate
U-turn away from the fatal direction the
world is heading in.
“We are at the
point where our climate system is starting
to spin out of control,” said Carstensen.
“A single year is left to agree a new global
treaty that can protect the climate, but
the UN talks next year in Copenhagen can
only deliver this treaty if the meeting
in Poznan this year develops a strong negotiation
text.”
