There has been an extraordinary meeting in La Jolla California, between the IATTC and a delegation of Ecuadorian tuna industrialists, to see if Ecuador’s proposal to postpone the planned ban on tuna fishing to July 2004 can be implemented.
The meetings were held from October 6th to October 11th. A gathering was held solely focused on this objective, which will have far going consequences for the Ecuadorian tuna industry.
The Ecuadorian industry is not in agreement with the ban, which is now planned by the IATTC to last throughout the month of December 2003.
Ramon Montaño Cruz, executive director of Atunec, said that the Ecuadorian proposal consisted of the need to adopt a continuous conservation program based on the Commission’s scientific and technical data on tuna, in the short and long term.
The Ecuadorian proposal is to implement the tuna-fishing ban in the months of June or July of each year, because these are months that do not imply losses for the local fishing sector and this is the low tuna catching season.
Although it has been reported that the Ecuadorian proposal would be accepted by the IATTC, there has been no formal confirmation from the IATTC yet.