Showdown looms for tuna in Brussels

Brussels, Belgium / Rome, Italy - - European Union member states and the European Commission will decide in the next week whether to support bluefin tuna conservation – or to encourage the continued wilful overexploitation of an endangered marine resource.

Today, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, DG MARE, will consider DG Environment’s support for a listing of the severely overfished Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to temporarily ban all international trade – the same day that EU member states are asked to give their own feedback on the proposal.

“It would be scandalous if the European Commission were to allow the region’s most emblematic marine species associated with a thousand-year-old fishing tradition to go extinct on its watch,” said Tony Long, Director of WWF’s European Policy Office in Brussels. “This would be a shameful legacy for the Barroso Commission. They must back the proposal to temporarily ban international trade.”

Following an initial proposal tabled in July by the Principality of Monaco, several EU countries – France, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Austria – quickly expressed support to list Atlantic bluefin tuna on CITES Appendix I, which would give the overexploited species a chance of recovery.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was first to express his country’s support for an international trade ban through CITES, saying: “It is against this great responsibility that we will be judged by our children and the generations to come.”

In addition, the European Commission’s Directorate General for the Environment has since recommended in a draft report – excerpted in a recent Financial Times story – that “from a scientific and technical point of view, the criteria for the listing of Atlantic bluefin tuna appear to be met. (...) There is no doubt about the link between international trade and overexploitation of the species.”

If the EU Commission and member states cannot reach consensus today, the decision risks instead running to a showdown of all 27 European Commissioners, as early as next Wednesday.

“It would be extraordinary if DG MARE, the very department tasked with protecting this iconic species, sought to block a CITES listing to ban trade in this endangered animal,” said Tony Long. “How could any of us have faith that the Commission is serious in wanting to end the catastrophic policy failures in the existing Common Fisheries Policy?”

Listing Atlantic bluefin tuna on CITES Appendix I would be a real chance for the species to recover from decades of massive overfishing and overexploitation, plagued by illegal takes and disregard for scientific advice.

Once bluefin tuna shows signs of recovery, WWF hopes to see a sustainably managed, thriving fishery in the EU and around the Mediterranean again in the years to come.

Final Feeding Frenzy of a Failing Fishery

Karaburun, Turkey – 11 May, 2009: Disregarding agreed bluefin tuna quotas, the Turkish government has set itself a unilateral bluefin tuna quota and broken its international commitments. The announcement comes just weeks into the 2009 bluefin tuna fishing season, and just over a week after Greenpeace uncovered an illegal landing of between 5 and 10 tonnes of juvenile bluefin tuna in the Turkish port of Karaburun(1).

Management of bluefin tuna is entrusted to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), an intergovernmental organisation in which the European Union is an active and influential member. The Turkish government objected to the bluefin tuna quota decided and agreed upon at the ICCAT meeting last November.(2)

Turkey currently operates the largest Mediterranean fleet fishing for bluefin tuna, an endangered species facing imminent collapse(3). Alongside ICCAT quotas, a minimum legal landing size is set at 30 kg to allow for at least one reproduction cycle before any catch. Catches below this minimum legal size limit have recently been reported by both Turkish and Italian media(4).

"Ignoring quota limits means that Turkey will simply bring an end to the bluefin tuna business even faster and once and for all, through the commercial extinction of the species," said Banu Dokmecibasi, Greenpeace Mediterranean Oceans Campaigner, in Turkey.

Since 2006, scientists have been ringing the alarm bell on the dire state of the bluefin tuna stock. They have advised not to fish above a maximum of 15,000 tonnes, and to protect the species' spawning grounds during the crucial months of May and June. Not only are the spawning grounds rampaged by industrial fleets every year, but the actual haul has been estimated at 61,100 tonnes in 2007(5), twice the legal catch agreed that year, and more than four times the recommended level to avoid collapse of the bluefin tuna population. This year, a 'recovery plan' for bluefin tuna will still allow legal fishing that is 47% above the upper sustainable limit(6).

"The scientific advice shows that this so-called recovery plan would be better called a fisheries suicide pact," said François Provost, Greenpeace International Oceans Campaigner. "Turkey, and all other fishing nations including European countries, should immediately close the bluefin fishery until its management is based on science, fishing capacity is decreased to sustainable levels and marine reserves are established to protect all the species' breeding grounds."

Greenpeace advocates the creation of a network of no-take marine reserves, protecting 40% of the world's oceans, as the long term solution to the overfishing of tuna and other species, and the recovery of our overexploited oceans.