OK so I'm a day or two off the pace with this story (courtesy of a long weekend - well even we need a day or two off once in a while), and didn't find out about Monday's tuna direct action in Paris until I showed up at the office again today. So what did I miss? Well, our French colleagues took the opportunity to protest against France's leading role in decimating Mediterranean bluefin tuna stocks by dumping five tonnes of tuna fish heads outside the door of the French Fisheries Ministry.
Timed to coincide with coincide with the opening of the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), in Marrakech, the action targetted France (as opposed to Italy or Spain, the two other worst offenders) in this instance because French Premier Nicholas Sarkozy currently holds the EU presidency. He has been using it to shape the EU position in favour of the short-term interests of his fishing industry above the need to save the Mediterranean bluefin tuna stock from collapse.
And the fact that it is on the verge of collapse is beyond dispute; ICCAT's scientific committee, the body charged with regulating tuna fishing in the Med, has been recommending for years that tuna quotas are set too high. In 2007 they set a sustainable level at 15,000 tonnes, but this was raised to close to 30,000 tonnes to pacify French, Spanish and Italian tuna fishermen. That would be bad enough, but it's not the whole story because the actual capacity of the combined fleets is something over 60,000 tonnes, and the regulatory regime is so slack that ICCAT's scientists themselves estimate that the amount of bluefin actually being caught is closer to this figure.
An article in The Economist this week quotes Raül Romeva, a green MEP from Spain, as saying that the EU Community Fisheries Control Agency's report on the state of the Mediterranean bluefin fishery has been sanitised and suppressed, because its contents are so embarrassing.
Unless serious steps are taken at this week's meeting, those countries who are members to ICCAT will bear the blame for managing the collapse of one of the most important and profitable fisheries of our time, and the destruction of a way of life for the fishermen of the region. To put this into a wider international context, even major Japanese companies are now recognising that the situation cannot go on - the giant Mitsubishi Corporation, the largest tuna importer into Japan (with about 40 per cent of the market) recently issued a revised statement on its sourcing policy saying that it "supports lower quotas, shorter seasons, an increase in minimum size of tuna that can be fished, and the protection of tuna spawning grounds…"
Close the fishery now
So what can ICCAT do? Well, the only hope is to close the bluefin fishery immediately and keep it closed until:
- Marine reserves have been established to protect all tuna species' spawning grounds;
- Fishing capacity has decreased to sustainable levels;
- A new management plan in strict compliance with the scientific advice has been adopted and is being properly enforced.
Sadly, although its scientists recognise the impending disaster which is staring them in the face, ICCAT is ultimately a political organisation, and so far the politicians continue to run scared of the short-term demands of their powerful fishing industries. Quelle surprise, as M Sarkozy might say.
Take action
Call for the closure of the bluefin tuna industry now - before it closes itself by collapsing »
