Source: Japan Times
Signatory nations to CITES on the protection of endangered species are unlikely to discuss measures to regulate international trade in bluefin tuna and eel at their meeting in Bangkok next March.
The list of the species to be examined was announced Friday. The secretariat of the convention omitted both bluefin tuna and eel, easing fears in Japan, a major consumer of both, that greater regulation could send market prices surging and severely impact domestic businesses.
Fearing the introduction of stricter rules, Tokyo is demanding that trade in bluefin tuna and eel be addressed at fishery resources management organizations rather than under the Washington treaty, formally known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora or CITES.
The United States initially considered the possibility of proposing eel be included in the list for the Bangkok meeting due to poor catches in recent times, but eventually decided against the idea.
Some 67 species have been placed on the list, including certain shark species, African elephants and polar bears.
A proposal to ban trade in bluefin tuna caught in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea was voted down at the last meeting of the convention’s signatory nations in March 2010. The motion was submitted by Monaco, which argued that the Atlantic population of bluefin tuna is on the verge of extinction as a result of decades of overfishing.
While the proposal drew support from the United States and European countries, Japan, the world’s largest consumer of tuna, teamed up with developing nations dependent on their fisheries industries to defeat it by a wide margin.
The scientific committee of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas is expected to release a report as early as this month showing that stocks in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean are recovering thanks to the Washington Convention’s successful efforts to boost resources management, including the introduction of reduced catch quotas for tuna.
According to informed sources, Japan needs to ensure it is at the forefront of the commission’s drive to assist the recovery of bluefin tuna stocks in the Atlantic if it wants to avoid the matter being discussed under the Washington Convention.