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Bluefin tuna (photo, ©2010 WWF/Canon Manu San Felix)

[WWF video] Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Atlantic bluefin tuna’s last reasonable chance for survival as a species has taken a beating: its defenders have been defeated in a critical vote at a Cites meeting in Doha, Qatar. A clear majority of nations of the Cites pact of countries, which regulates trade in endangered species, voted 18 March against a ban on bluefin tuna fishing.

The Cites head office is based in Geneva.

Gland, Switzerland-based World Wildlife Fund for Nature, which has campaigned for a ban to allow stocks to recover from over-fishing, says 72 countries in Cites voted against the ban, while 43 voted for it and 14 abstained.

“After overwhelming scientific justification and growing political support in past months – with backing from the majority of catch quota holders on both sides of the Atlantic – it is scandalous that governments did not even get the chance to engage in meaningful debate about the international trade ban proposal for Atlantic bluefin tuna,” says Sergi Tudela, head of fisheries at WWF’s Mediterranean office, from Doha.

Libya called the vote after cursory discussion of the motion that had been put on the table by Monaco. Several European countries including France, Italy and Spain, which have large subsidized fishing fleets, were unwilling to support an immediate ban. Japan, which imports 75 percent of the catch, lobbied heavily in Doha against the ban. Japan is estimated by WWF to have imported 32,000 tons of the fish in 2007, when the total allowable catch for that year was 29,500 tons.

The motion to ban the trade of tuna was made by Monaco in 2009 after the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat), the body set up to regulate sustainable  exploitation of the bluefin tuna, failed to impose credible restrictions, in defiance of its own scientists’ recommendations.

Links to other sites: Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, WWF

WWF video arguing for a ban on fishing bluefin tuna