KOBE MEETING: Global Tuna Catch Identification System In The Makingff

International fisheries officials are expected to push for a global tracking system that would certify the origin of every tuna headed to market at an unprecedented conference that convenes this week, to reverse a sharp decline in tuna catches.

The conference brings together the world's regional tuna management groups and runs through Friday in the western city of Kobe. It is seen as a key step in combating the downturn in one of the most valuable and endangered high seas fisheries.

Attendees, representing the commercial fishing industry as well as government regulators, will seek the creation of a framework requiring fishermen worldwide to produce certificates of origin for all species of tuna they catch, Kyodo News reported Sunday, citing a draft action plan for the meeting. Doing so would help clamp down on excessive or illegal fishing, it said.

Requiring certificates of origin for all tuna would expand the conservation programs already under way in some regions, which cover certain threatened species such as bluefin tuna, Kyodo reported, without saying how it got the draft or who wrote it.

The draft also calls for a monitoring system that would track the tuna catch from the open sea to the fish market.

The recommendations echo those of the World Wildlife Fund, which released a position statement before the meeting calling for a “global catch identification system,” according to the Australian Associated Press.

This week's meeting is being hosted by Japan, one of the world's biggest tuna consumers and a frequent target of conservationists who accuse its fleets of overfishing. The tuna talks will for the first time bring together the five so-called regional fishery management organizations, including the oversight bodies for tuna fishing in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The discussions are also expected to focus on ways the regional groups can better share information.

By 2004, the number of adult Atlantic bluefin tuna capable of spawning had plummeted to roughly 19 percent of its 1975 level in the western half of the ocean, according to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

Overfishing and illegal fishing is often cited as the cause.

In October, the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna agreed at a meeting in Miyazaki, Japan, to reduce the global catch of the endangered southern bluefin tuna by more than 20 percent for 2007.

At that meeting, Japan also promised to halve its quota for the southern bluefin tuna as punishment for overfishing, but denied allegations it has poached thousands of tons of the endangered species every year.

Concern has been growing about overfishing of tuna and other fish species. In November, a study in the journal Science warned that if current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048.