January 1^st was Mexico’s first tuna fishing day in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and end to the 40-day temporary tuna fishing ban which commenced last November 20^th, 2007, reported the Mexican Director of Fisheries Luz del Carmen Martinez Zabatdheny.

The temporary tuna fishing ban had started at 00:00 hours on November 20^th and finalized at 24:00 h of December 31^st 2007, and was established by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), an organism of which Mexico is a member. It affected vessels carrying Mexican flags to temporarily fish these species both at high sea, as evidently within the specified Mexican waters. However, the tuna vessels fishing with rods and the recreational fishing vessels are not subject to the ban.

Mexico had managed to catch about 65,000 tons of tuna up to the month of August last year. The represented a decline in catches 10% when comparing these figures to those of the same period in 2006, which were of 72,000 tons.

Currently, most of the tuna is discharged at the Ports of Mazatlan and Manzanillo, where the Mexican fleet has its home base. Up to a decade ago, the Mexican fleet was operating from the Port of Ensenada.