The “western” Atlantic bluefin stock, which once cruised in vast numbers up the eastern seaboard into Canadian waters, is so depleted that American fishermen caught just 12 per cent of their allowable commercial quota in 2006. They expect to do even worse this year.

The stock in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, meanwhile, has been pillaged by what officials describe as an “out-of-control” fishery capturing three times as many bluefins as scientists say should be harvested.

”I am very concerned that the western stock has collapsed, and the eastern (stock) is, if not collapsed, on the verge of collapse,” says William Hogarth, chair of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, the agency attempting to manage the fish.

”They’re catching the last few really big fish,” says biologist Carl Safina of the U.S.-based Blue Ocean Institute, who compares the fishery to the dying days of the buffalo hunt. He says the remaining giants are too precious to be carved up on sushi platters and should be left to spawn and rebuild stocks.

Others, like James Jones of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, say the North American fishery - which will see several thousand giants killed in Canadian waters this fall -- is not the problem. He says the much heavier toll in European and international waters threatens to doom the stocks. Jones, in tandem with many scientists and U.S. officials, says that fishery must be reeled in to save the creature widely described as the most magnificent fish in the sea.

The fishing in the eastern Atlantic management zone -on the European side- is so excessive that science advisers at ICCAT recommended last year that the allowable catch be slashed to 15,000 tons. The bluefin fishery in North American waters is much smaller, with a quota of 2,100 tons shared between the U.S., Canada, Japan and Mexico.

Hogarth, who was appointed ICCAT chair in 2005, supported the cut to the eastern fishery, as did Jones, who is Canada’s commissioner to ICCAT. But they were out-voted by European and African nations, which dismissed the recommendation and set their 2007 quota at 29,500 tons.

They decided to “just blow off the science,” says Hogarth. “To me, that’s inexcusable.”

The World Wildlife Fund is calling for creation of a sanctuary in the western Mediterranean where bluefins breed. It is also urging ICCAT, which meets in November, to bring in “urgent measures to facilitate stock recovery.”

Some want to end the bluefin fishery, while others are calling for better protection of the fragile western stock in its breeding grounds in the Gulf of Mexico and its feeding grounds in the north Atlantic. Jones says he is comfortable taking the 546 tons Canada is allowed by ICCAT this year, which means a few thousand mature giants will be killed. They are not nearly as abundant as they once were in Canada’s maritime waters, yet fishermen off P.E.I. filled their 100-tonne segment of the Canadian quota in just three days in September.

Jones and Lutcavage say changes in ocean conditions may have altered migration patterns to bring more mature bluefins into Canadian waters. There is also speculation the lack of herring in U.S. waters and the relative abundance in Canadian waters may be attracting more of the huge fish. Others argue Canada is simply seeing the last of the big tuna, which has always been attracted to cold northern waters. And, once the giants are caught, the fishery will collapse, some say.

”The Canadian bluefin tuna fishery, it will fall apart completely within five years,” predicts Safina.

Source: Excerpt of article published by CanWest News Service