Nations to fish for more tuna

Photo: Twitter/WWF

Countries fishing the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean agreed Tuesday to expand the annual quota for prized Bluefin tuna to reflect an improvement in their stocks. Environmentalists insisted the increase was excessive and premature.

The 50-nation International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas agreed to hike the quota from 24,000 tons this year to 28,000 next year, with a further 4,000 tons added in each of the following two years.

The decision means the quota has more than doubled from five years ago, when once depleted stocks of Bluefin tuna, a delicacy in sushi and sashimi dishes the world over, first started showing the potential of a recovery.

"We have been able to decide a gradual increase of captures, by staying careful. And we are staying within the scientific advice," Stefaan Depypere, the head of the European Union delegation said in an interview.

Environmentalists insisted the advice was more ambivalent and were bitterly disappointed since they maintain that the recovery of the Bluefin is still too fragile to permit such major increases in fishing quotas.

"This year was an enormous step backwards for sustainable tuna fisheries," said Paulus Tak of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Considering how many species have been overfished to near commercial extinction in the past few decades, from cod off eastern Canada to Mediterranean Bluefin, the challenge of increasing catch quotas and still safeguarding stocks is daunting and fraught with risk.

Some environmental groups are troubled by the ICCAT's scientific findings and think they might be overly optimistic.

Bluefin tuna's annual market value stands around $200 million at the dock and four times more at the final point of sale.