Jeremy Smith, PlanetArk 28 Nov 07;
BRUSSELS - EU governments agreed a 15-year plan on Tuesday that set strict curbs on fishing for bluefin tuna to stop the species heading for extinction.
Bluefin tuna is prized by sushi and sashimi lovers, and numbers have fallen sharply in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
The EU plan cuts catch quotas progressively each year for these waters, raises minimum fish sizes for landing, extends several "closed" fishing seasons and sets out paperwork requirements to trace tuna catches through the processing chain.
"The difference now is that it (plan) is permanent, not temporary, and nobody is arguing any more about quotas. We now have complete clarity and are set up for 15 years from 2007," one official at the European Commission told reporters.
EU governments will now have to draw up annual fishing plans detailing how they intend to allocate fishing rights and notify the EU Commission of each plan by the end of January.
"Next year, 2008, will be a crucial year if we are to save the bluefin tuna," EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg said in a statement. It was vital to make the plan work from the start "to prevent the collapse of the fishery".
"The Commission considers the annual fishing plans ... to be both a necessary and an effective instrument to avoid overfishing, in view of overcapacity in the EU fleet," he said.
OVERFISHING
Minimum landing sizes were increased from 10 kg to 30 kg to help curb catches of juvenile or immature fish. In Japan, the major market for the species, a single fish can command prices of up to US$100,000.
Unlike most tunas, bluefin grow slowly and mature late, making them vulnerable to intensive trawling. Among the ocean's top predators and fastest swimmers, a bluefin tuna can live as long as 30 years.
The EU's overall bluefin tuna catch is administered by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the global body that oversees the rules for tuna fishing, and is now set for the next five years.
Late last year, ICCAT members reached an agreement to reduce their annual bluefin fishing quota gradually to 25,500 tonnes in 2010 from the current 32,000 tonnes.
Within that, the EU's 2007 quota was set at 16,780 tonnes and falls to 16,210 for 2008. But this year, the EU overshot its quota by more than 4,000 tonnes due to overfishing by France and Italy, which now face extra national quota reductions for 2008.
The overfishing forced the European Commission to ban bluefin tuna fishing in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic for the rest of this year. (Editing by Sarah Marsh and Robert Woodward)
