Industry behind push to get IATTC to follow scientific advice on tuna
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - June 25, 2008 - Lost in most of the articles about tuna conservation recently has been the fact that industry is behind the push for conservation measures in the Pacific.
At the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) meeting this week, NFI and other industry groups called on the IATTC to follow the advice of its own scientists and support time-limited closures for yellowfin and big-eye tuna in parts of the Pacific.
The groups also called for more research into reducing by-catch from fish aggregating devices.
Based on reports from people at the meeting, it appears that the skipjack tuna stock is healthy in the Pacific. However, the big-eye and yellowfin stocks are showing signs of strain, in that catches have been diminishing over the past few years, and the average size of fish caught is declining as well.
In the absence of stock abundance surveys, these signs have been used by fisheries scientists in the past to signal problems in recruitment to a fish stock.
The scientific recommendations before IATTC are for closures for 90 days at a time in specific zones to help protect the stocks.
According to NFI ‘The coalition is calling upon the Commission to follow the advice of its scientific staff to adopt time and area closures to protect tuna [yellowfin and bigeye], and implement a research program to investigate how to manage fish aggregating devices (FADs) to reduce the capture of non-target species.’
At issue is the fact that IATTC is a government to government organization, and member countries attending the meeting in Panama included Colombia, Ecuador, the United States, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Venezuela and Japan. Not all these governments have the same level of commitment to following scientific advice or to fisheries conservation, instead at time maneuvering to protect their industries at the expense of the overall stocks.
The EU, as an example, although not a member of IATTC, has a long record of ignoring scientific advice in fisheries.
It would be more honest for the environmental groups to point out the governments that are recalcitrant in this area, rather than make a blanket charge that all groups are opposing tuna conservation.