Posted on 12 November
2009 - Porto de Galinhas, Brazil: New bluefin
tuna catch estimates show Mediterranean
fishing fleets continuing to make a mockery
of fishing quotas set by the beleaguered
Atlantic tuna commission.
The new catch estimates
– themselves likely to severely underestimate
the effect of continuing rampant illegal
fishing – are also around four times the
level scientists estimate would give the
collapsing tuna population only limited
chances of recovery over a time span of
more than a decade.
Scientists attached
to the International Commission for the
Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) estimated
the 2008 bluefin catch at 34,120 tonnes,
well over last year’s quota of 28,500 tonnes
set under the discredited 2006 ICCAT “recovery
plan”.
Last year, ICCAT set
a 22,000-tonne catch quota for 2009 in a
controversial response to its scientists’
recommendations for a quota as low as 8,500
tonnes.
The new estimates come
as ICCAT considers radical amendments to
management measures in the face of rising
calls for an international trade ban on
Atlantic bluefin tuna and a supporting suspension
of the fishery.
“New estimates lodged
with ICCAT’s science committee show that
one quarter of the latest estimated bluefin
tuna catch would give us just a toss of
the coin chance of recovering the tuna population
by 2023,” said Dr Sergi Tudela, WWF Mediterranean.
Dr Tudela said he believed
the latest estimates themselves 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.”
ICCAT’s scientific
committee notes that the estimates take
no account of illegal fishing by unregistered
boats.
The French navy reported
dubious catch data and a lack of observers
in intercepted Turkish bluefin boats, investigations
are underway into the reflagging of vessels
in Algerian waters and a Spanish study revealed
laundering of undersize tuna through tuna
fattening farms for the Japanese fresh tuna
trade.
Opening the ICCAT meeting,
chair Dr Fabio Hazin of Brazil said ICCAT
had to set up “an efficient mechanism for
the monitoring and control of the fishing
fleets” and capable of “applying penalties
proportional to the infringements detected”.
“We have been very much
able to impose sanctions on non-members
in the past and time has also come for ICCAT
to show it does not have double standards,
and that it is equally determined to also
impose sanctions on its members in the same
way it does with non-members,” he said.
+ More
Romanians protest lift
of sturgeon fishing ban
Posted on 12 November
2009 - Bucharest, Romania – A government
decision to overturn a ten-year ban on the
fishing of wild sturgeon in the Danube River
basin drew protests in the capital this
week, led by WWF and a contingent of local
NGOs.
The controversial legislation,
allowing sturgeon fishing for purposes other
than restocking, was adopted in September
by the Agriculture and Environment Committees
of the Romanian Parliament. The new law
in effect legalizes fishing of sturgeons
for commercial purposes.
Meanwhile, some Romanian
politicians are calling for the elimination
of the current ban on gillnet and trawler
fishing in the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve.
To counter this destructive
decision, 34 Romanian environmental NGOs,
including “Save the Delta” Association and
WWF, organized a bitter protest in the Romanian
capital Bucharest on Tuesday.
“The new fishing law
practically throws away the EUR 4 billion
spent by the Romanian Government for the
sturgeon restocking programme, which was
developed during the last four years,” said
Lumini?a Tanasie, Director of WWF Danube-Carpathian
Programme Romania. “If the 200,000 young
sturgeons which were bought for restocking
the Danube, are not given the necessary
time to mature and reproduce naturally,
the sturgeon fisheries will not be able
to recover, and both the economical and
the ecological loss will be enormous.”
In front of the Ministry
of Agriculture, Forests and Rural Development
building in Bucharest, protesters on Tuesday
held a “sturgeon fair”, offering the public
the opportunity to view sturgeons caught
in a fishing gillnet. Environmentalists
also displayed the photographs of the MPs
who proposed the amendments.
At the end of the protest,
the sturgeons were sent to the MPs. The
MPs who proposed the elimination of the
ban on gillnets and trawlers within the
Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve received
the gillnet used during the protest. Each
of the MPs also received a letter of protest
signed by the 34 participating NGOs, asking
them to reconsider their actions and adopt
new legislation.
Scientific reports indicate
that among the sturgeon species which populate
Romanian waters, are the critically endangered
(possibly extinct) Ship Sturgeons, the endangered
Russian and Beluga Sturgeons, as well as
the Sterlet Sturgeon, considered to be vulnerable.
The Black Sea once harboured
some of the most productive sturgeon populations.
However, research on age structure of sturgeons
captured in Romania has revealed a critical
decrease in the number of sturgeons born
during 11000–99 that survived to sustain
the population.
Sturgeons are fished
mainly for caviar, although their meat and
skin are also widely used in the region.
Poorly regulated fisheries have caused severe
decline in populations due to overfishing,
which almost entirely disrupted the fish
species' natural spawning in the Danube
River.
Due to concern about
the sustainability of international trade
in sturgeon caviar and meat, the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) has been regulating such trade in
all sturgeon species since 1998 and has,
from time to time, been forced to recommend
trade suspensions.
Fishing of sturgeons
for commercial purposes was banned in Romania
in 2006 for a period of ten years. The relatively
long period of prohibition is explained
by the long life cycle of the sturgeon (the
maximum age being between 24 and 100 years),
by the long period necessary for the sturgeon
to reach reproductive age (between 6 and
26 years), and by the fact that the sturgeon
does not reproduce every year.
The letter of protest
was also sent to the Romanian President
Traian Basescu, to the Interim Prime Minister
Emil Boc, to the International Commission
for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR),
to the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora and to the Romanian National Commission
to UNESCO.
