Next Joint Tuna RFMO’s Meeting Eyed For 2009 In Europeff

Five international tuna conservation bodies agreed in principle Thursday to hold their next joint meeting in 2009 with the European Union expressing its intention to host the conference to discuss measures for sustainable use of stocks of the fish.

The agreement came during the organizations’ first-ever joint meeting in Kobe. The five tuna resource management bodies, which started their meeting on Monday, closed their discussions in the morning and are working on an action plan they are to adopt Friday.

Conference sources said the Kobe meeting is also close to consent on a proposal made by Japan -the world’s biggest tuna consumer- to organize a meeting of heads of the five bodies late this year or early next year to check each other's conservation efforts.

The Japanese government says the chairmen’s meeting would review regional efforts to be made in 2007 to combat overfishing of tuna and discuss more effective measures for sustainable use of the world's tuna stocks.

The five bodies are expected to put the proposal in the action plan, the sources said.

Japan has also proposed setting up a working-level meeting to chiefly discuss the sharing of lists to distinguish illegal fishing vessels from properly registered ones.

The working-level meeting would also focus on other technical issues including how the bodies could share certificates of origin for tuna to prevent unreported fishing. Under Japan's proposal, they would reach a conclusion on the issue by the end of this year and decide in their respective annual meetings in 2008 to implement measures worked out by the working-level meeting.

The proposed working-level meeting would be also required to conclude by the end of 2008 its discussions on coordination between the five bodies to limit their catch quotas.

About 300 representatives of the fishing industries and governments of some 50 countries and regions are to wrap up the Kobe meeting Friday.