A 342kg bluefin tuna caught off the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido was bought for Yen 32.49m in the first such auction of the season in Tokyo 5 January. The buyers were an upscale Tokyo sushi restaurant and a chain of Hong Kong restaurants. In 2001 the same buyers paid Yen 20.2m for a 202kg bluefin tuna, the previous record.
Japan is the world’s biggest consumer of seafood, and 80 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna is consumed there.
The price paid Wednesday was Yen 95,000 per kg, slightly lower than the price paid per kg in 2001, suggesting that bluefin tuna is more abundant than before. Conservation groups have long maintained that the Atlantic and Mediterrean bluefin tuna is under too much pressure and have urged regulatory groups like ICCAT to enforce a drastic reduction of catches to maintain stocks.
Background: GenevaLunch
Swiss hare in field with bare patch (photo ©2010 Swiss Ornithological Institute / Marcus Jenny)
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Tigers have a hope of surviving, at the end of 2010, but bluefin tuna could well disappear from the face of the Earth and its cousins in the fish world are not in good shape, with one in five species threatened.
These are some of the conclusions of the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), which runs the Red List of Threatened Species. WWF Switzerland, in a year-end look at IUCN’s winners and losers in the species departments, notes that worldwide, the number threatened with extinction has been rising steadily, from 16,928 in 2008 to 18,351 two years later, some 33 percent of all species.
Bluefin tuna (photo: WWF)
Tigers have a fighting chance, after governments agreed in 2010 to a series of protective measures, according to the IUCN. But governments let down the bluefish tuna, whose stocks are badly overfished, the Gland-based group states.
And then there is the hare-razing tale of one of Switzerland’s disappearing creatures.
The hare and the wolf are two of the losers in Switzerland, with the hare population falling to 2.7 per square metre, in some areas 1.6/m2, with experts saying that 2-6/m2 pushes a population into the critical stages to remain viable. Hare numbers are shrinking rapidly due to urban growth, reduced protected road passages and less ground cover that leaves young hares in above-ground nests where they are easily run over by tractors.
Switzerland has an estimated population of only 15 wolves, but even this small number is threatened by parliamentary approval that would give hunters and farmers the right to shoot. If parliament passes changes to the law, which are under discussion, the country would need to pull out of the Bern Convention, a strict international agreement to save the wolf.
Geneva, Switzerland and Paris, France (GenevaLunch) – Major European businesses are calling for a significant change in the way bluefin tuna is caught and marketed in a push to rescue the species from collapse. The call comes in a manifesto 24 November with Switzerland-based WWF which will be presented to Fabio Hazin, president of International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), currently meeting in Paris.
European companies, including leading Swiss retailers Coop and Migros, but also French chains Auchan, Atac and Casino, have pledged not to buy or sell tuna, and call on ICCAT to agree to the following:
- Cut the annual catch from 13,500 tons to below 6,000 tons. In 2007 the ICCAT allowable catch was 29,000 tons. Over 61,000 tons were estimated to have been taken, 32,000 tons of which went to Japan.
- Establish sanctuaries in spawning zones – fishermen raid tuna spawning areas to take fish that are below weight, denying the species the possibility to procreate.
- Suspend the industrial practice of purse seine fishery in the Mediterranean Sea – this combs the sea of bluefin tuna, and herds the fish into “farms” for fattening before they are sexually mature. Many European governments, such as France, Spain and Italy, subsidize this practice in the belief that it is sustainable “aquaculture”.
ICCAT is an intergovernmental agreement with a mandate to protect the bluefin tuna, which ranges from the Eastern Atlantic into the Mediterranean Sea. ICCAT meets in Paris until 27 November.
Background: GenevaLunch, WWF
Underwater banner to save bluefin tuna © Greenpeace 2010/ Marco Care
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The black market in bluefin tuna spans three continents and is estimated to be worth $4 billion annually in a recently released report by a group of investigative journalists. And the European fishing industry blatantly violates its own management rules by continuing to overfish the bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, according to the international environmental group, WWF, based in Gland, canton Vaud.
Breaking its own rules
Observers of bluefin tuna fishing vessels in the Mediterranean Sea reported violations of the fishing regulations in 2010 that resulted in under-reporting of tuna catches, illegal transfers of live fish, and falsifying official documents, the joint report by Greenpeace and WWF says. The observers in some cases were denied access to ships or were limited to accepting the skipper’s tally of fish caught.
The groups base their claims of “lack of compliance with management rules” of bluefin tuna hauls in Mediterranean waters on data provided to the governments who are parties to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), an “inter-governmental fishery organization responsible for the conservation of tunas and tuna-like species in the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent seas.”
ICCAT meets in Paris, France for an extraordinary meeting, 17-27 November. France and Spain together hold one-third of the allowed catch quota. The European Commission has said it would welcome real reductions in tuna catch quotas at the meeting.
A $4 billion dollar illegal trade
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a Washington DC-based organization, sent 12 reporters on the trail of the black market bluefin tuna trade, which resulted in a report, “Looting the Seas“. They conducted more than 200 interviews with fishermen, ranchers, divers, scientists and officials over a seven-month period.
Key findings from the report
A massive black market lies behind the plummeting stocks of Eastern Atlantic bluefin stock, the report alleges. At its peak, between 1998 and 2007, more than one in three bluefin were caught illegally, creating an off-the-books trade conservatively valued at $4 billion.
Fishermen blatantly violated official quotas and engaged in an array of illegal practices, including misreporting catch size, hiring banned spotter planes, catching undersized fish, trading fishing quotas, and plundering tuna from North African waters where EU inspectors are refused entry.
The report’s other highlights include:
- National fisheries officials have colluded with the bluefin tuna industry to doctor catch numbers and avoid international criticism. France, for example, allegedly filed fraudulent catch data with the European Commission for years until France came clean in 2007.
- Sea ranches, where bluefin are fattened to increase their value, became the epicentre for “laundering” tuna in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Many ranches grossly under-reported the fish they had in their pens and faked releases when forced by authorities to let go of illegally-caught bluefin.
- The paper-based reporting system implemented by regulators in 2008 to bring transparency to the trade—dubbed the Bluefin Tuna Catch Documentation scheme—is full of holes, rendering the data almost useless. For example, during 2008 and 2009 more than 75 percent of all purse seiner vessels catches, which comprise nearly half the overall catch, are missing crucial information that regulators need to follow the fish from vessel to market.
- A widespread, off-the-books trade in bluefin tuna has existed in Japan since at least the mid-1980s. ICIJ obtained a confidential 2006 investigative report commissioned by Australia and Japan that exposed widespread overfishing and laundering into Japan of southern bluefin tuna, a sister species of the Atlantic bluefin tuna.
- While there are signs that EU officials have started to crack down, illegalities remain a serious problem. In North Africa and Turkey, even less accountable fleets are ramping up operations.
- A wall of secrecy protects the bluefin industry. Officials in countries from Spain to Croatia failed to produce records on fishing and farming infringements. Even the European Commission denied access to fishery infraction records, citing protection of commercial interests and “military matters”.
Background: GenevaLunch
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.
Some members of the great white shark's family are on the Cites list under review for protection
Bern / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland has agreed to back demands for a ban on bluefin tuna, a favourite of sushi diners, when Geneva-based Cites meets in Doha, Qatar, 13-25 March. Cites is the inter-government Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and 175 governments will be sending representatives to the triennial meeting.
Bluefin tuna: A dying school © 2009 Brian J Skerry, National Geographic Stock, WWF
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A complete ban on the trade and commercialization of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna is to be discussed by the 175 member countries of Cites that meet in Doha in March, according to a statement by the group Friday 5 February. Cites is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Monaco proposed last 14 October that the bluefin tuna be added to Annex 1 of the Cites most endangered species list, effectively ending its legal exploitation.
© 2009 Brian J Skerry, National Geographic Stock, WWF
Gland, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A ban on fishing the bluefin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, stocks of which are at their lowest historical levels, was not approved by the body in charge of managing the fish, announced WWF International, from Recife, Brazil Sunday 15 November.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) agreed only to reduce the allowed quota from 19,500 tonnes to 13,500 tonnes, not enough to help stocks of the fish to recover, according to WWF, which is based in Gland, near Geneva. The ICCAT’s own scientists said at the ICCAT meeting in Recife that a maximum quota of 8,000 tonnes, if strictly enforced, would give the eastern bluefin tuna only a 50 percent chance of recovering.
WWF International has called on the International Convention for the Conservation of the Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) to impose a ban on catching the bluefin tuna, as well as a ban on trading in it. ICCAT is holding its 21st regular meeting in Recife, Brazil Monday 9 November. It meets to decide on whether to heed its own scientists’ calls to end its members’ fishing of the bluefin tuna, stocks of which are close to collapse in the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Monaco proposed 14 October that the bluefin tuna be placed on the CITES list of endangered species banned from international trade. A CITES ban on the trade in ivory in 1989 is credited with saving African elephant populations.
European tuna fleets export most of their catch to Japan, the world’s largest importer of tunafish.
WWF International joined Greenpeace 28 October to call on the organization to heed its scientists’ findings, pleas that have largely gone unheeded in the past. A single bluefin tuna sold for $173,000 in January 2009. In 2007, it is estimated that the tuna catch was 61,000 tonnes, more than twice the quota fixed by ICCAT.
