Southern Bluefin Stocks Showing Signs Of Recoveryff

Source: Port Lincoln Times

Southern bluefin tuna stocks are showing positive signs of recovery with levels now stronger than originally predicted.

Governments of southern bluefin tuna (SBT) catching countries and the Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Industry Association met at the annual Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna in Taiwan last week to discuss stock management formulas that will guide decisions on quota levels from late 2012.

Australian tuna association chief executive Brian Jeffriess said progress at the meeting was slow, but real, with the benefit of new stock assessments creating a major advance for the industry.

Mr. Jeffriess said decisions were increasingly based just on models rather than a combination of models and commonsense, which would provide more accurate results.

“The benefit of the new stock assessment will be that it will use real data, and not data corrupted by the illegal catch,” he said.

“The industry’s view is that there has been a large underestimation of the size of the illegal catch, and of the capacity of bluefin stocks to recover.”

Mr. Jeffriess said the meeting indicated the Australian government was aware of its long term responsibilities to both the stock and to Eyre Peninsula families that depended directly and indirectly on the industry.

"This much stronger and balanced approach is very welcome. Governments and industry both need to exercise caution on the SBT stock because a lot of people depend on the right long-term judgments being made about the future.”

He said the challenge for fishery managers was to look back and see why model predictions were wrong and apply these lessons for the future so more workers in the industry did not lose jobs because of mistakes by governments.