Bluefin tuna get shafted; sharks actually get protected

The recently-concluded ICCAT meeting in Paris, despite the horrific revelations of the vast volume of bluefin tuna fishing cheating, basically set the next year's quota at the same level of last year's, but they did decrease it slightly in a cover-their-fat-asses maneuver by a paltry and essentially meaningless 600 metric tons. This leaves the Mediterranean bluefin tuna in the precarious positon of a 30% chance of fishery collapse (by ICCAT's own reckoning), and due to the uncontrolled cheating on the quotas, the actual likelihood of a collapse is likely much higher than that.

Environmentalists: fishing quota could be death sentence for bluefin tuna

How 'bout this for a finisher:
"An analysis last year by WWF predicted that the Atlantic bluefin tuna population in the Mediterranean will become functionally extinct by 2012 if the fishery isn't closed. According to the report Mediterranean bluefin breeding population's were cut in half between 2002 and 2007, while the size of breeding fish also fell by half over fifteen years."

2012 is little more than a year away.

Great news, eh? The main culprits who pushed ICCAT to maintain the high levels are the European Union and France. But there is good news on this front: more and more people are waking up to the problem this represents:

Thousands pledge to boycott restaurants serving bluefin tuna


The real solution is a ban on the trade and distribution of all Atlantic bluefin tuna. Japan was making noises that it was scared about how much of the bluefin it was getting was illegal; if real teeth could be put in the policing of the black-market trade, that would help, but the only real way out of this mess is to ban everything, because you can never be sure.

However, suprisingly, ICCAT stepped up to the plate on shark protection, except for the poor porbeagle:

Sharks Fare Better Than Tuna at Conservation Meeting

Unprecedented Shark Conservation Action taken by Atlantic Tuna Commission


Good news and bad news:
Good: While the oceanic whitetip shark protection agreed is broad, the new ICCAT measure on hammerhead sharks includes explicit exemptions for developing coastal States to fish the species for food and report catches by genus instead of by species. To balance these exceptions, the measure calls on these countries to ensure hammerheads do not enter international trade and prevent increases in hammerhead catches. [Who fishes hammerheads for food?]

Bad: The European Union (EU) failed to achieve consensus on a proposal to prohibit retention of porbeagle sharks due primarily to opposition from Canada, the only ICCAT Party with a targeted porbeagle fishery.

Also bad: The proposal to ban removal of shark fins at sea was offered for the second year in a row by Belize, Brazil, and the US. The proposal was deferred due to opposition from Japan and a desire to focus on other shark actions.

Damn Japs. Damn, damn, damn -- and I mean that sincerely.

This shark protection movement is important, because:

More than a million Atlantic sharks killed yearly - study



"At least 1.3 million sharks, many listed as endangered, were harvested from the Atlantic in 2008 by industrial-scale fisheries unhampered by catch or size limits, according to a tally released Monday. The actual figure may be several fold higher due to under-reporting, said the study, released by advocacy group Oceana on the sidelines of a meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT)."

UN-believable. Emphasis on the UN.


NOAA was self-congratulatory:
United States Leads Push for Strong Measures to Protect Sharks and Sea Turtles
ICCAT Takes More Steps for Bluefin Tuna Conservation

They were "disappointed" that ICCAT didn't take more action on the bluefin tuna. I'd put "aghast". Let's see how that reads now:

"The United States was AGHAST that in other areas ICCAT did not fully act in accordance with the scientific advice of the ICCAT scientific body. For example, nations only agreed to minor quota reductions for bluefin tuna fisheries, and didn’t take the precautionary steps necessary to accelerate stock growth."

Yes, that sounds much better.