By Atuna
Bluefin tuna is currently the species with great visibility in Europe due to its endangered status. Environmental organizations are pressuring the EU to insert bluefin on the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Fauna and Flora) listing under Appendix One, which would ban the trade of the species for good. However, pro-fishing parties claim that bluefin stock assessment has been made with no reliable data – and that is mainly the reason a new assessment will be done next September 2010 – while anti-fishing parties declared that for having such a long life period (around 40 years) bluefin stocks assessment won’t be able to portrait the real state of the stocks. On top of the controversy, fishermen keep stating that boats are coming back full with adult fish.
The International Commission for the Conversation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the organization responsible for managing bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, admits that the lack of data in the past years has a negative consequence on bluefin assessment and that it is not easy to see the differences on the stock over a year time for long-lived species such as this one. Nevertheless, ICCAT’s scientific body is very hopeful about the next assessment in September since it has more detailed information collected this time.
For all ICCAT stocks, the indices of population size are based on CPUE (Catch Per Unit Effort) which, according to the Commission gives signs of the stocks tendency in shorter periods of time. Combining that with the improvement of data collection, the ICCAT scientific body believes that reliable information over the state of bluefin stocks will be soon available. Yet, the lack of past data is something compromising results and giving room for environmental organizations to challenge the validity of such assessment.
WWF adds on top of the issues mentioned, that the high incidence of illegal fishing – “exacerbated by insufficient management measures adopted in recent years†- makes the bluefin population growth extremely unlikely. “Postponing action again will only allow one more season of massacres fishing activity in the Mediterranean Seaâ€, they finalized.