US keeps bluefin tuna off endangered list

Shaun Tandon Yahoo News 27 May 11;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States on Friday rejected calls to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna as an endangered species, saying that while it was worried about overfishing it did not fear imminent extinction.

Environmental groups have repeatedly voiced concern that the global fad for Japanese food was driving the world's stocks of tuna to dangerously low levels and have sought strong safeguards to preserve the species' survival.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was putting Atlantic bluefin tuna on a watchlist of species at risk but would not classify it under the Endangered Species Act, which would bring legal protections.

"Based on careful scientific review, we have decided the best way to ensure the long-term sustainability of bluefin tuna is through international cooperation and strong domestic fishery management," said Eric Schwaab, a senior official at the agency.

He said that the United States would continue to advocate strict international quotas on the number of tuna that can be hunted to "ensure the long-term viability of this and other important fish stocks."

The administration pledged to review its decision in early 2013. Clay Porch, a senior federal scientist, acknowledged that the study of tuna stocks in the Gulf of Mexico was conducted mostly before the massive BP oil spill.

Porch said 2010 tuna stocks were down but that the drop could be within normal fluctuations. To be listed as endangered, a species must be found to be at threat of extinction within a definable time frame.

The United States last year led a push to ban the international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, but the proposal was easily defeated at the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species after intense lobbying against the plan by Japan and opposition by some European nations.

A separate meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, which groups 48 major fishing nations, decided in November to trim the catch quota only modestly to 12,900 tons in 2011.

US authorities said, however, that they saw a better outlook for tuna amid the growing international attention.

"The new quotas that were set forth at the last convention provide a significantly better picture, providing we have sufficient compliance, than might have existed before," Schwaab told reporters on a conference call.

Senator Olympia Snowe hailed the decision, saying that an endangered listing would have jeopardized the livelihoods of fishermen in her coastal state of Maine.

"Such a listing would have unilaterally penalized US fishermen, particularly the hard-working responsible fishermen of Maine, who have been properly managing this valuable resource," the Republican lawmaker said.

The federal government considered the request to protect tuna after a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, which said that the BP oil spill threatened tuna's breeding habitat.

Catherine Kilduff, a staff attorney at the center, said that the group would review the government's findings and left open the possibility of going to court to ensure the conservation of tuna.

The center has called for a consumer boycott, through which it said 22,000 people have pledged not to eat at restaurants that serve bluefin tuna.

"If there is a grassroots movement to stop consumption of this species, then it will also tell political leaders that no longer can their decisions be made just based on the industry's greed to keep overfishing," Kilduff said.

U.S. Declines to Protect the Overfished Bluefin Tuna
Felicity Barringer New York Times 27 May 11;

The Obama administration said on Friday that it had declined to grant Endangered Species Act protections to the Atlantic bluefin tuna, whose numbers have declined precipitously because of overfishing on both sides of the ocean.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the fish, whose fatty flesh is prized by sushi aficionados, would be classified as a species of concern, however, effectively placing bluefin on a watch list as the agency awaits new data on the impact of a stricter international management regimen.

“The future of this species relies on sound international management,” said Larry Robinson, NOAA’s assistant secretary for conservation and management. The agency’s scientists are also continuing to assess the effect of last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill on bluefin spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico, officials said, and the agency will revisit its decision by early 2013.

Mr. Robinson said the bluefin tuna did not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act because it was “not likely to become extinct.”

The decision drew sharp criticism from the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group based in Arizona that filed the petition requesting endangered species protection. “The Obama administration is kowtowing to the fears of the U.S. fishing industry instead of following the science on this,” said Kieran Suckling, the center’s executive director.

Several other environmental groups have questioned the wisdom of unilaterally listing the bluefin tuna as an endangered species, saying that coordinated international action is preferable.

Last year the United States backed an international effort to have the Atlantic bluefin protected under the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, but the move was blocked by aggressive lobbying by Japan, where a single adult fish, weighing more than 300 pounds and measuring more than six feet long, can be sold for thousands of dollars.

Asked to reconcile Friday’s decision with the push for a listing by the convention, known as Cites (pronounced SIGH-tees), Eric Schwaab, assistant administrator for NOAA’s fisheries service, said that another global body, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or Iccat, had established stricter fishing quotas and more rigorous monitoring over the last year and that his agency planned to study the results.

He added that a listing under the Endangered Species Act required a different standard from a Cites listing; under the American law, there must be compelling evidence of the likelihood of the fish’s extinction, he said.

No one disputes that the bluefin population has plummeted in recent decades. The most recent analysis of the decline, prepared last year by Iccat, found that the eastern Atlantic’s stocks of fish old enough to reproduce declined by 80 percent between 1970 and 1992 and have since fluctuated between 21 percent and 29 percent of the 1970 level.

In the western Atlantic, bluefin stocks declined more than 70 percent from 1970 through the mid-1990s, after which the “spawning stocks” remained relatively stable.

Lee Crockett, director of federal fisheries policy for the Pew Environment Group, another conservation organization, said that multilateral efforts to protect the bluefin tuna were crucial but that “international tools are not being used effectively.” Fishermen in the Mediterranean catch “twice the legal quota illegally,” he said.

Nor does the United States do enough, he added. Mr. Crockett said that additional steps were needed to protect the bluefin tuna’s spawning areas in the Gulf of Mexico and to end log-line fishing there, which causes the bluefin to be caught accidentally by commercial fishermen in pursuit of other fish.

The American fishing industry welcomed NOAA’s decision, while assigning most of the blame for overfishing to fishermen on the other side of the Atlantic. “We’re glad that the leadership paid special attention,” said Rich Ruais, executive director of the American Bluefin Tuna Association.

Overfishing in the east has affected stocks in the west, Mr. Ruais said, because the fish is wide-ranging and can swim across the Atlantic in less than two months.