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.

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

Hi 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.

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