05 March 2010 - International
— So the world is finally waking up to the
fact that the bluefin tuna is in crisis.
That's nice. But decades of overfishing
have pushed this majestic fish to the brink
of extinction, which is not the point at
which we should start thinking about conservation.
The situation is so extreme that an international
trade ban is now its only hope of survival.
This week the US did
the right thing. Following the example of
Monaco, the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden,
amongst others, it agreed to support a proposal
to list bluefin on Appendix I of the Convention
of International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES), meeting March 13-25 in Doha, Qatar.
Appendix I is where the most endangered
species are collected, in practical terms
it would mean no more trade in bluefin until
stocks recover.
It is the last chance
for bluefin. These “Shepherds of the Seas”
which can accelerate faster than a Porsche,
and swim at speeds of up to 60 mph – are
in serious trouble.
In 1999, we showed how
in the Mediterranean bluefin tuna stocks
had collapsed by by 80 percent. Ten years
later, scientists found that the population
of Atlantic bluefin tuna is below 15 percent
of what it was before commercial fishing
began.
This sorry state of
affairs is a combination of ever-growing
demand for bluefin on international markets
and atrocious management of the species.
The International Commission for the Conservation
of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), has repeatedly
ignored the advice of its own scientists
and failed to tackle overfishing and pirate
fishing of the species.
Is this the best that
modern fisheries management can deliver?
Agreement to act on protecting a species
only when it faces extinction?
CITES – likely to be
a bloody affair
As the CITES meeting
draws closer, the stage is being set for
a serious showdown. A ban would need to
see two-thirds of the approximately 175
governments that are party to CITES, vote
in favour.
The US may be onside,
but there are plenty of others whose short-sighted
thinking threatens to push bluefin over
the edge.
Japan is the world’s
largest importer of bluefin - a single fish
can fetch up to US$100,000 on its markets
– it is vehemently opposed to the ban and
is loudly threatening to do everything it
can to stop the ban.
Both Canada and China
have also gone on record as saying they
will vote against a ban. Others such as
Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil remain
on the fence.
Meanwhile in-fighting
within the European Union is threatening
to leave it with no position at all. This
would spell disaster for the bluefin.
EU infighting threatening its support of
the ban
EU countries take over
50 percent of the bluefin catch, and are
responsible for most pirate fishing of the
species.
The EU's Mediterranean
countries, like Spain, Malta and Greece
are all publicly fighting hard against the
EU supporting the listing proposal spearheaded
by Monaco.
Yet, many EU member states support the ban.
The UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland
and Germany, for instance, are championing
it. Even Italy, whose fleets are responsible
for much of the overfishing has come out
in support.
France recently announced
its support of the ban. Like Italy, France
has a terrible reputation in the bluefin
fishery. Italian and French support, however,
comes with a giant health warning – they
will only support the ban if there is months
of delay before it is implemented. There
is no justifiable reason for this – after
all it is only putting off the inevitable
and pushing stocks into further decline.
A cynic might suggest that the delay is
a tactic to buy more time to undermine the
ban behind closed doors, while publicly
getting kudos for supporting it.
If the EU fails to get
it together to agree a united position backing
the ban without any conditions attached,
the entire Doha meeting may fail. If this
happens and bluefin is condemned to collapse,
the EU’s credibility as a voice for species
protection will lie in tatters.
We urge the EU to do
the right thing. Supporting the ban is the
very least it can do for bluefin.
Need for CITES listing
exposes failure of global fisheries management
The Atlantic bluefin crisis is so severe
that if the proposal to list it on CITES
Appendix I fails, the fishery has probably
no hope of survival. The current bluefin
crisis is the worst recent example of how
governments and fisheries management organisations
are failing our oceans. But, it is far from
the only one. From North Sea cod to Pacific
bigeye tuna global fish stocks are in serious
trouble.
Getting the listing
is the last chance bluefin has for survival.
But, it can never be considered a “win”
to have had to take such extreme measures
to pull a species back from the brink. As
our US oceans campaigner John Hocevar puts
it “a CITES listing is not management, it
is a last ditch effort to prevent extinction.”
Our global oceans are
in crisis; more than 40 percent are heavily
degraded. Three quarters of fish stocks
are either overfished or severely depleted.
It is not too late to
save our seas, to shift the balance of human
impacts from harm to protection. Greenpeace
campaigns for a global network of marine
reserves, national parks at sea to cover
40 percent of the world’s oceans. Marine
reserves are areas closed to all extractive
uses, such as fishing and mining. A growing
body of scientific evidence demonstrates
that the establishment of large-scale networks
of marine reserves is not only urgently
needed to protect marine species and their
habitats, but could also be crucial to reverse
the decline of global fisheries.
