FishingRomantis

BRUSSELS, Belgium, September 19, 2007 (ENS) - The European Commission today decided to close the 2007 fishery for bluefin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. On the basis of the catch returns received from the seven European Union countries that fish for bluefin, the 2007 EU quota of 16,780 metric tons has been exhausted, the Commission said.

This closure concerns Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Spain. The other two member states involved, Italy and France, already closed their own fisheries earlier this summer.

European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Joe Borg said, "Clearly there are problems both of overfishing a stock already threatened with collapse and of equity between the member states concerned. As is its duty, the Commission will do all it can to address these issues urgently."

The Commission has noted failings in the reporting of catch data necessary to monitor the uptake of the EU quota in real time. Borg said measures against such failings will be put in place in time for the 2008 fishery to prevent the problems experienced this year.

There are two populations of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a smaller western population which spawns in the Gulf of Mexico, and a larger eastern population which returns each May from the all around the North Atlantic Ocean to spawn in the Mediterranean Sea.

Spotter planes and helicopters are waiting for the tuna as they enter the Mediterranean. In an attempt to protect the spawning tuna, the use of spotter aircraft has been illegal in the month of June since 2001. But illegal flights during June have been observed, says WWF Mediterranean, which campaigns for protection of bluefin tuna.

The largest of all tuna species, adult bluefins are typically two meters (over six feet) long but can reach over four meters (13 feet). Adults average around 250 kg (550 pounds), but the largest recorded specimen was a massive 679 kg (1,496 pounds).

Bluefin have traditionally caught using traps, but most of the traps now have been replaced with high-tech fishing fleets.

Once a school of tuna has been located, the fishing vessels move in. Most are caught by high-tech, large-scale purse seine and longline fleets. A few traditional trap fisheries still operate and there are illegal driftnet fisheries in some areas, like the Gulf of Lions.

The tuna are transferred from the purse seine net into the nets of a tug boat that tows them to tuna farms located in various places around the Mediterranean. There they are placed in net cages for fattening to feed the Japanese sushi and sashimi market which consumes 40 percent of global bluefin landings.

The bluefin fishery is driven by the high prices paid in Japan, where a single bluefin has sold for over $US 150,000.

The eastern population of bluefin tuna has been overfished for many years, and scientists have repeatedly warned of the danger of collapse if nothing was done to dramatically reduce the level of fishing activity.

In particular, high rates of undeclared overfishing have been singled out as a key cause of bluefin decline.

A new 15 year recovery plan for eastern bluefin tuna was adopted last November by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, ICCAT, at the organization's annual meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

The EU quota of 16,779.5 metric tonnes was allocated at a meeting in Tokyo in January and divided among the seven member states using an agreed allocation key.

The ICCAT compliance committee meets in November, to establish final catch figures for all contracting parties for the 2007 season. Borg says the Commission will seek to ensure that any member state that is penalized by this early closure of the 2007 fishery will be compensated in future fishing possibilities.

In the case of member states that have not yet caught their quota, by law they will be compensated in later years. EU rules also allow for deduction of overfished quota from member states in the years to come.

The 2007 total quota was set at 29,500 metric tonnes for the EU and other fishing nations.

But WWF says the big problem is that no one really knows how many tonnes of tuna were caught during the season.

"In order to assess the true impact on the stock it is necessary to monitor and quantify the amount of the illegal catch - the catch above quota, says WWF. "What was the total actual size of the landings by different national fleets? Unknown."

"ICCAT will meet in November 2007 without any hard evidence about the impact of this year's high quotas or any real-time monitoring of the evolution of the stock," WWF claims.

Borg says the European Commission will transpose the new ICCAT bluefin recovery plan into EU law in a "timely" manner. In addition, he says the Commission will be looking at measures to ensure that the member states respect the "real time reporting" requirements contained in the plan, on the basis of the five-day catch report which must be completed by the masters of all fishing vessels.

Borg says the Commission will continue and extend the unannounced visits by its own inspectors to landing ports and farms, and will seek to improve the exchange of information between fisheries administrators both between member states, and with other ICCAT contracting parties, in particular with regard to the transfer of tuna to fattening cages.

A high priority will be placed on the ICCAT plan for joint international inspections at sea. And, says Borg, Importing countries, in particular Japan, will be asked to refuse imports which are not shown to comply fully with ICCAT measures.

Diego Crespo is president of the Spanish Tuna Trap Producers' Association. He is a tuna trapper as his father and his ancestors were before him. This year, he saw the bluefin population crash.