The final ICCAT decision on next year’s bluefin tuna quotas went along levels suggested by the EU Council – forced on Commissioner Maria Damanaki – drawing protests from outraged environmentalist describing it as “a massive failure” and a product of “greed and mismanagement”.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) held its annual meeting in Paris on Paris on 17-27 November to decide fishing opportunities for the bluefin tuna, a pricey ingredient in exclusive sushi, and some other more or less threatened species in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
The run-up to the meeting had been a bitter power struggle between Damanaki – who needed a mandate from the Council to negotiate and sign the decision in Paris – and the dominating EU fishing powers, lead by France, Italy and Spain. Damanaki finally had to fold and give in to a compromise containing far less drastic TAC cuts than she or the NGOs had wished.
The nations behind the compromise claimed it was indeed in line with scientific advice, but failed to mention that even so, the decision would imply just a 60-77 percent chance to reach by 2022 goals the Union had signed other international agreements to reach much earlier.
ICCAT in Paris decided to reduce this year’s Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of 13,500 tonnes by just 600 tonnes. The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), who had urged a maximum level of 6,000 tonnes, said in a statement that the decision did “almost nothing” for the threatened fish, and the global OCEANA organisation called it “almost laughable”.
OCEANA, who had called for a total closure of the bluefin tuna fishery, also pointed out that ICCAT had “failed completely to take action to establish spawning ground sanctuaries, a basic and much-needed management measure”.
Echoing that point, the WWF noted that “under pressure from the Mediterranean fishing industry and countries benefiting from the highly profitable trade of the sushi favourite red-fleshed bluefin tuna, ICCAT endorsed an annual catch still far too high to enable the species’ recovery – and held back efforts to regulate the fishery in the Mediterranean, where the eastern Atlantic population of bluefin tuna migrates to spawn”.
“Greed and mismanagement have taken priority over sustainability and common sense at this ICCAT meeting”, said Dr Sergi Tudela, Head of WWF Mediterranean’s Fisheries Programme.
The Pew Environment Group, in a statement published later, noted that “it is now clear that the entire management system of high seas fisheries is flawed and inadequate. The time for letting the fox guard the hen house is over”.
“Japan, the United States, the European Union and other member governments had an opportunity to secure meaningful protection for bluefin tuna this week. The inability of ICCAT member governments to make significant decisions to improve the health of Atlantic bluefin tuna and shark populations reflects the failure of a system that was set up largely by fishing countries on behalf of fishing interests”, said Dr. Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group.
ICCAT reported little progress on an earlier commitment to establish better management of the swordfish fishery, but did decide on protection on a half-dozen shark species.