Long Line And Purse Seine Fishermen Want A Moratorium On New large Tuna Vesselsff

Two international fishing industry groups called for limits to tuna catches Wednesday to stop the population of the fish from deteriorating due to overfishing.

The two organizations, each representing longline and seine fishing operators worldwide, said in the statement they are concerned about “the stock status of the world tuna resources being exploited close to, or over the level capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield.”

The Tokyo-based Organization for the Promotion of Responsible Tuna Fisheries and the World Tuna Purse Seine Organization, headquartered in Seoul, adopted a joint statement demanding a moratorium on the use of additional large tuna vessels, officials said.

The statement would be sent to five international tuna conservation bodies, which would hold their first joint meeting in Kobe, Japan, Monday through Friday next week, the officials said.

The bodies are the Western Central Pacific Ocean Fisheries Commission, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas and the Commission for the Conservation of the Southern Bluefin Tuna.

The statement also expressed concerns about “the stock status of the world tuna resources being exploited close to, or over the level capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield (MSY)”.

Japan eats a quarter of the world’s tuna, more than any other country, but faces pressure from environmentalists, who have blamed the global fad for Japanese food for bringing tuna numbers to the brink of extinction.

An international commission in November reduced the world’s gross catch of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean from 32,000 tons this year to 29,500 tons for 2007, a move likely to lead to an import crunch in Japan.

Japan has also accepted a major cut in its quota for southern bluefin tuna in the Pacific Ocean as punishment for overfishing.