Boon for bluefins

The European Union closes fishing season early 7

It's been said over and over again: Eastern bluefin tuna cannot handle the pressure they face from overfishing. These sleek and powerful fish are unlucky enough to be among the world's most coveted seafood species, and for years scientists have called for a moratorium as a last-ditch effort to save these genetically pure, irreplaceable creatures. While strict quotas have been in place for years, poor quota enforcement and illegal fishing have driven the bluefin to the brink of extinction.

On Monday, the European Union ended the fishing season for most of the Mediterranean's purse seine fleet -- the ships that are responsible for 70 percent of the tuna caught in the Mediterranean. This move could save up to 100,000 bluefin this year alone.

My organization, Oceana, has been carefully monitoring the purse seine fleet with our new boat, the MarViva Med. We have recorded rarely-seen images of bluefin fattening pens and documented purse seiners illegally using spotter planes in their pursuit of the fish.

I didn't anticipate that the E.U. would react so quickly and shut down the season well before its original July 1 end-date. But our work is far from over. The next step is to make sure that the closure is enforced, and that non-E.U. fishing outfits don't start targeting tuna as well. We will be watching.

Andrew Sharpless is the CEO of Oceana, the world’s largest international nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation. Visit www.oceana.org.

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  1. caniscandida Posted 12:38 am
    17 Jun 2008

    what frustration!The ichthyologists and other scientific experts have known for a long time what the bluefin need, and what they do NOT need.  But the work must be so tangled and arduous and frustrating, to have to deal with fishers, who have their own, self-serving ideas about how far they want to go with "sustainability" and conservation, and then also with governments, who are trying to satisfy various competing constituencies.
    And as though that were not bad enough, on top of it comes this added problem, the difficulty of enforcing the quotas, and of getting the European law enforcement people to do their job.  Oceana's work, monitoring the violations of quotas, must be mighty frustrating, since (a.) that is work that the law enforcement people ought to be doing, and (b.) the weakened quotas, much higher than what the scientists recommend, are anyway barely adequate to save the tuna.
    Anyway ....  It is good to hear from Andrew again, after his long absence.  I have missed him.  (And, hello, Suzannah!)
    Best wishes to the MarViva Med!  Well done, on a good maiden voyage!
    For the linguists out there, "marviva" should be analysed, not as meaning "living sea," which would in Spanish be "mar vivo," "mar" being masculine-gender, but rather "Long live the sea!," a flipped-about form of the more conventional "!Viva el mar!"

    Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

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  2. Andrew Sharpless's avatar

    Andrew Sharpless Posted 12:57 am
    17 Jun 2008

    thanks!Hi Canis, thanks for you nice comments. Yes, we were all surprised and happy to see the EU make this decision, although as you know it's just one of many steps in a byzantine fishery system.
    Interesting you should comment on the masculinity of the Spanish word "mer." I just returned from a couple weeks on Oceana's Ranger, our other research vessel, where the crew is mostly Spanish. The captain told me that Spaniards who live near the sea call it "la mar," while those who live inland call it "el mar." Interesting, right?

    Andrew Sharpless

    CEO

    Oceana

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  3. amazingdrx Posted 1:07 am
    17 Jun 2008

    Good work!Plenty of video of fishing would help.  Showing the idiotic destruction really brings the point home.
    There are a couple of commercial fishing shows on cable now that try to glamorize the occupation, they only serve to highlight the stupidity.
    A recent one featured australian fishing for tuna.  Disgusting "myte".  Is it just me or is an australian accent particularly disgusting in conjunction with eco-destruction.  Maybe it's Rupert, Mel, and the many trolls from "down under" that lend this impression.
    Sea food?  Don't eat it.  Boycott fish until this battle to save ocean life is won.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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  4. suzannah Posted 1:13 am
    17 Jun 2008

    mea culpaHi guys, Suzannah here, Oceana's editor. I post these entries for Andy and I was still signed in under his username when I wrote the above comment. That's me, not him! Sorry. :)

    Oceana: Protecting the world's oceans.

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  5. Sam Wells Posted 1:25 am
    17 Jun 2008

    Keep going!I think the US should shut down the blue fishing along the US & Canada Atlantic seaboard as well - most blue fin fishing is closed in the Gulf because that's where they spawn. There are plenty other tuna species that taste fine and are not so threatened, including the yellow, black, big-eye, and albacore.
    Yes, we have some purse seine trawlers in the US that target blue fin.  They should eliminated from the permit season, and only hook & line used.  I believe US hook fishing only allows 1 blue fin per vessel with a maximum of two on a two-day voyage, something like that.
    Anyway, thanks for guarding the Med - a bunch of our Gulf fish end up over there!

    -sammie

    Onward through the fog

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  6. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 1:31 am
    17 Jun 2008

    The MarViva Med link is bustedso I substituted an image for it. If only....
    http://www.geocities.com/finbags1/images/ohio2.jpg

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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  7. suzannah Posted 1:45 am
    17 Jun 2008

    thanks biodiversivistThat's exactly what it looks like! How did you know?
    Well, not quite. Here's the link to the MarViva page. Don't know what happened with the link in the post!

    Oceana: Protecting the world's oceans.

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