Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)THE world’s most endangered fish, the bluefin tuna have received help from an unlikely source.
Japan, long considered the nation responsible for driving the species into decline, is now calling to strengthen its numbers.
After years of lobbying, the country has agreed to support the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna.
Fisheries boss Hitoshi Takahashi said: “We want to keep eating bluefin and to do that we need to see they are fished in a sustainable way.”
His vows follow an unsuccessful meeting of tuna-fishing nations in Paris, where European attempts to halve the existing quota were thwarted by the French.
The quota now stands at 13,500 tonnes but conservationists have warned that it must drop to 6000 tonnes if the stocks are to be allowed to come back.
Saving this great fish is easy – MONITOR the catch at the buyer level – Japan. Eliminate the BLACK market buyers who skulk around in the dead of night. Make the process stonger to watch the fish from sea to table. STOP the cheating and greed from overfishing and CORRUPT Euro countries like FRANCE and ITALY by killing off the end user who buys illegally caught fish for cash. No BUYERS – CONSEQUENCES for cheating – Mother Nature will build back the stocks.
Is it a surprise that Japan should support the International Conspiracy to Catch all Tuna? This is all lip service from a nation that consumes 85% of the worlds BFT catch. If they were serious about consuming at a sustainable level, they would limit their import tonnage a year in advance. This would give notice to fisherman that the market would demand less and thus require less fish. Additionally, Japan lobbied hard in Doha this past summer to make sure BFT was not added to the UN endangered species list. That Japan support ICCAT (an organization notorious for mismanaging BFT stocks) should not speak towards Japan’s interest in saving BFT, rather it should reflect the ICCAT’s policies and track record are not in the interest of conservation at all.