Bluefin tuna stocks in the Mediterranean Sea and East Atlantic Ocean are on the brink of extinction because of rampant illicit fishing, the environmental group WWF said on Wednesday.
A report by the WWF said that bluefin tuna catches are at least 40% higher than an internationally-approved quota of 32 000 tonnes, and are deliberately under-reported at official level.
It called for the immediate closure of bluefin tuna fishing in the area, followed by an agreement this year on a ”strong recovery plan and strict management measures”.
Otherwise ”we will most likely face the total commercial and biological extinction of the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna,” the report warned.
The report said industrial fleets from the European Union — mainly France — Libya and Turkey were responsible for most of the ”illegal, unreported and unregulated catches”.
”The European Commission risks bearing witness to the collapse of this centuries-old fishery,” said Simon Cripps, director of WWF’s Global Marine Programme.
”We urge EU Fisheries Commissioner [Joe] Borg to show leadership and call for an immediate total closure of the fishery,” he added.
Traditional trap fishermen in the Gibraltar Straits between the south-western Mediterranean and the Atlantic have caught 80% less fish over the last three years compared to the 1990s, according to the WWF.
”In the race to catch shrinking tuna stocks, industrial fleets are switching from traditional fishing grounds to the last breeding refuges in the eastern Mediterranean and Libyan waters,” said the report’s author, Roberto Mielgo Bregazzi.
The report was partly based on customs and other official data and monitoring of tuna trade flows out of the Mediterranean region.
The WWF said that in 2004 France reported production of more than 9 450 tonnes, notably to the EU.
However, it only declared catches of 7 030 tonnes to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) that year, suggesting overfishing of over 50% on the French quota, the report said.
Libya has not reported any catch to ICCAT for 2004 or 2005 despite having several vessels, while Turkey was not reporting catches either, it added.
Some bluefin tuna catches are also ”ranched” at sea until they are slaughtered, including off northern Cyprus.
Unreported tuna catches are often processed at sea before being shipped out to the lucrative Japanese market, the report said. – AFP