After the rejection of a proposal to ban international trade in the Atlantic bluefin tuna, some experts now say that its southern cousin is even closer to extinction.
The Atlantic bluefin stock, for which all protective measures were voted down at the CITES meeting in Doha, Qatar, in March, has decreased by about three quarters in the latest 40 years.
As for the Southern bluefin tuna, the population has sunk to less than five percent of what it was before commercial fishing started, according to the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), a quota-setting body comprising Australia, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan.
Most southern bluefin, reaching up to 200 kilograms in weight, are caught in waters around southern Australia, New Zeeland and South Africa. With prices at the Tokyo fish market – the species is popular in gourmet sushi – about a third lower than for the Atlantic version, each southern bluefin tuna can still sell for thousands of Euros.
At the meeting in Doha of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), both Japan and New Zealand voted against inclusion of the Atlantic bluefin in CITES Annex 1, and Australia had announced that it would not support such a call, which would have meant an international trade ban.
As an official policy, both Australia and New Zealand, claim that fishing restrictions are a more effective way to deal with this sort of problem, but environmentalists meant that these nations’ CITES stand rather reflected a desire to avoid pressure on the southern bluefin tuna fisheries as a possible next step.
“We’ve looked at the (CCSBT) scientific report that came out last year and from that it’s clear that the only option that’s going to bring about even a modest recovery of the stock is a zero catch,” Greenpeace New Zealand oceans campaigner Karli Thomas told the AFP news agency.