Japan to take some tuna fishing boats out of service: government

Yahoo News 30 Jan 09;

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan will take out of service up to 20 percent of its tuna fishing boats after tougher catch quotas were imposed on the land of sushi, the government said Friday.

Environmentalists have warned that tuna stocks are declining to dangerously low levels across the world as a global fad for Japanese food and a lack of regulation lead to over-fishing.

Of 739 long-line tuna fishing boats, Japan will scrap more than 100 ocean-going and coastal vessels by the end of March, the Fisheries Agency said.

Nearly 1,000 Japanese fishermen will lose their jobs in the process, the agency said. The government will provide those losing their boats with one-time payments that total 9.7 billion yen (108 million dollars).

Japan is the world's biggest consumer of tuna and imports most of the bluefin tuna caught in the Mediterranean.

Last year, international tuna conservation bodies decided that Japan should cut its fishing quota for bigeye tuna and bluefin tuna each by 30 percent.

Some conservation groups have called for even tougher restrictions on tuna, saying that even the revised catch levels are not sustainable.