Posted on 25 November
2013 - Cape Town, South Africa – At the
close of this year’s meeting of ICCAT, the
Atlantic tuna commission, WWF welcomes the
respect for science in setting bluefin tuna
catch quotas in the Mediterranean – but
deplores the failure of member countries
to impose stronger protection for vulnerable
sharks and lack of a clampdown on rule breakers.
The International Commission
for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT)
just closed its 23rd regular annual meeting
in Cape Town, South Africa.
Global conservation
organization WWF is satisfied with the maintenance
of the annual quotas for the bluefin tuna
in the East Atlantic and the Mediterranean
at 13,400 tonnes but regrets the lack of
progress on sharks as well as on compliance
with management measures.
“WWF congratulates ICCAT
member countries for sticking to science
again this year regarding bluefin tuna quotas
in the East Atlantic and Mediterranean.
This is a good sign for the credibility
of ICCAT. However, failure to address countries’
failure to comply with rules remains an
issue of grave concern,” says Dr Sergi Tudela,
Head of Fisheries at WWF Mediterranean.
After years of mismanagement,
ICCAT followed for the first time last year
the scientific recommendations and set an
annual quota at 13,400 tonnes for bluefin
tuna fisheries in the East Atlantic and
Mediterranean.
In spite of the lack
of a new assessment this year, there was
strong pressure from several countries to
increase the quota, disregarding scientific
advice. The EU, represented in the meeting
by European Fisheries Commissioner Maria
Damanaki, strongly backed respect for science.
Proposals to increase the quotas were finally
discarded.
An important issue raised
this year by WWF is the lack of traceability
in tuna farms. In a study, Bluefin tuna
farming growth rates in the Mediterranean,
WWF highlights a potential for hiding unreported
catches, and asked ICCAT member countries
to urgently come up with a technical solution.
ICCAT has just adopted
a common procedure based on stereoscopic
images that are likely to close this important
loophole.
“Farming is one of the
least controlled areas of the bluefin tuna
business, as WWF has been demonstrating
for many years. This year alone, in a Mediterranean
tuna farm where control authorities used
stereoscopic images, as much as 550 tonnes
of live tunas were found to have been unreported.
This figure is higher than the national
quota of many ICCAT nations and shows a
very worrying situation,” says Dr Tudela.
Regarding sharks, ICCAT’s
performance this year was disappointing.
A proposal to strengthen the current ban
on shark finning by obliging boats to land
sharks with fins naturally attached was
defeated by radical opposition from Japan,
China and Korea. Protection of the endangered
porbeagle shark was opposed by Canada.
Overall, WWF is particularly
disappointed by the lack of political will
from ICCAT member countries to effectively
address compliance issues.
Following a WWF report
last year which uncovered a gigantic scandal
of almost 20,000 tonnes of unreported bluefin
tuna traded to Japan mostly, and despite
the commitment of concerned ICCAT Parties
to present an explanatory report this year,
only Panama complied. The results of Panama’s
investigation endorse WWF’s allegations
regarding likely fraud in reporting while
concerned producer countries in the Mediterranean
and Japan explicitly rejected any further
investigations.
“Mechanisms to address
and ensure compliance with management measures
are crucial for the credibility of any regional
fisheries management organization, including
ICCAT. What is essential – and what has
been lacking – is a clear political will,”
says Dr. Susana Sainz-Trápaga, Fisheries
Officer at WWF Mediterranean.
2014 is expected to
be a crucial year for bluefin tuna, with
an update of the scientific assessment in
the ICCAT agenda. ICCAT’s scientific committee
has warned this year that more resources
are necessary from ICCAT Parties to support
its work on this matter.
“Many ICCAT Parties
criticize scientists for the uncertainties
surrounding their last stock assessment
results but when it comes to fund research
they fail to ensure the necessary means,”
says Dr Tudela.
+ More
Protection of Antarctica's
seas put on ice
Posted on 01 November
2013 - Hobart, Australia: International
talks have once again poured cold water
on attempts to protect the conservation
values of Antarctica’s oceans and its marine
wildlife, WWF said today.
The latest meeting of
the Commission for the Conservation on Marine
Living Resources (CCAMLR) closed today in
Hobart, and again failed to agree on how
to protect the Ross Sea and the seas off
East Antarctica.
The frustrating outcome
came just months after talks broke down
in Germany, following many years of research
and the Commission’s 2009 commitment to
establish a representative system of marine
protected areas (MPAs) around Antarctica.
WWF spokesperson Bob
Zuur is frustrated at this backward step.
“Antarctica’s oceans
are under ever-increasing pressure, from
fishing, shipping and a changing climate,”
Mr Zuur said.
“I sailed through the
Ross Sea last year and saw dozens of whales,
hundreds of seals and albatrosses, and thousands
of penguins. The Ross Sea and East Antarctica
are two of the Earth’s truly special places,
largely untouched by humans.
“Lasting protection
for these conservation values should be
obvious. Yet the focus was on protecting
fishing interests. The conservation principles
enshrined in the CCAMLR convention will
be questioned following this failure to
reach agreement.”
The two proposals on
which CCAMLR failed to agree were a joint
US-New Zealand proposal to designate a Ross
Sea MPA of 1.34 million km2, including a
fully protected area of 1.25 million km2;
and a proposal from Australia, France and
the European Union that would designate
a cluster of seven marine protected areas
in East Antarctica, covering about 1.63
million km2.
Mr Zuur said the Southern
Ocean is critical for scientific research,
both for studying how intact marine ecosystems
function and for determining the impacts
of global climate change.
“Action is needed urgently,
and we expect the next meeting in 2014 to
deliver on commitments to protect, in a
ecologically meaningful way, one of the
most vulnerable oceans on Earth,” Mr Zuur
said.
