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Capitol Ideas
Pirates, Tuna Fish and You

By Dr. Russell Nelson
TIDE
Mar/Apr 2010

Offshore anglers from New England down through the Gulf of Mexico pursue the Atlantic’s highly migratory species every year. The occasion to tighten up on hard-hitting and tasty yellowfin and bigeye tuna provides a ferocious experience in the cockpit followed by some of the best dining our waters have to offer.

The Atlantic tunas are managed under international treaty by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), an institution whose repeated failures to salvage bluefin tuna stocks have made big news this year. While yellowfin and bigeye have not declined in abundance to the low levels of bluefin, their landings throughout the Atlantic have declined almost 50 percent from the high catches of the early 1990s. Mean sizes in the commercial fishery have also declined about 50 percent in the same period and now a tangle of new conflicts across two oceans in the world’s high-seas industrial tuna fisheries have coincided to produce a chilling new threat to the U.S. recreational fishery for these species.

A LITTLE BIOLOGY

Bigeye and yellowfin mature and begin to spawning between 2 and 4 years of age. Spawning occurs during the summer months and the prime spawning and nursery grounds for both species in the Atlantic are in the equatorial Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa. For the first couple of years, these small tunas aggregate and feed in these rich waters, putting on the muscle that allows them to begin annual westward migrations to the U.S., Caribbean, Central and South America after two or three years. The species are prolific spawners and grow fast. Both yellowfin and bigeye can reach sizes of 400 pounds and the IGFA all-tackle records are 392 and 398 pounds respectively.

Ordinarily, the twin characteristics of early reproduction and fast growth give fish some resilience when it comes to maintaining healthy stocks in the face of fishing pressure. Historically that had been the case with these tunas in the Atlantic, but beginning nearly 20 years ago the continuing march of high technology in industrial commercial fishing efforts changed all that.

TARGETING JUVENILE FISH

Young bigeye and yellowfin tuna have a strong tendency to aggregate around floating objects. Most anglers have seen this tendency and are aware that a chance encounter with a thick Sargassum weed line, trees or other flotsam or jetsam most often leads to great access to tunas or dolphin and other pelagic predators. In the late 1980s, the commercial fishery for these tunas began to change. Fewer fish were taken at large, post-spawning sizes by longlines and the use of highly efficient purse seine gear began to skyrocket.

The discovery of the huge aggregations of juvenile tuna in the Gulf of Guinea – aggregations that were not really seasonal but persisted year around – brought Spanish and French seiners into the area, and the once-artisanal near shore fishery rapidly changed into a high-seas shootout with the latest electronic technology replacing small sailing vessel with hand-powered gear. With the purse seiners came fish aggregating devices (FADs).

A modern FAD is a far cry from the occasional bit of floating junk in the water. Today’s FADs can cover acres of surface area and deploy vertical netting and other attracting materials down to 100 feet. Each vessel may deploy more than100 of these FADs and once placed in the water they are not removed. Most FADs are equipped with GPS and satellite-linked sonar that gives them the ability to transmit real time information on the location and density of juvenile tuna aggregating about the device.

A tuna fleet technician can sit at a computer at a dockside office in Marseilles and use the FAD data and algorithms to calculate how to direct each vessel at sea to move from FAD to FAD in a manner that maximizes catch and minimizes fuel consumption.

“Faced with this ultra-modern technological assault, the fish just don’t have a chance, and the small scale coastal fishers who supplied tuna to local African markets have been pushed off the page,” observed CCA Government Affairs Committee Chairman Chester Brewer, a frequent member of the U.S. delegation to ICCAT. 

ICCAT’S RESPONSE?

The scientific advisers to ICCAT have warned for years that the increasing effort – measured in vessels and technical efficiency – being placed on the juvenile portion of the bigeye and yellowfin stocks were reducing sustainable yield by shifting catches from large fish that had spawned a number of times to immature juveniles. Total closures of the Gulf of Guinea to all high-seas tuna fishing have been suggested.

In the face of this scientific advice, supported by the U.S., Japan, Taiwan and other nations, the European Community (EC) delegation has pushed aside direct efforts to stop the destruction by developing complicated and difficult to implement or enforce long-term plans to reduce the capacity (fleet size and efficiency) of the purse seine nations. An “experimental” closure of a small portion of the Gulf was abandoned following scientists’ analysis that the closure was too small to do any real good.

 In 2008, Brewer worked closely with delegation member from the National Marine Fisheries Service to develop a plan with the support of key African nations to implement serious reduction in catch in the Gulf. A plan that looked like it might really accomplish something fell apart at the last minute when back room pressure from the EC – hints at reductions in aid – forced most of the African nations to agree to a delay. A commitment to really address the issue at the 2009 meeting was made instead. 

PIRATES AND TUNA FISH

With more than 2,000 miles of Indian Ocean coastline set in a productive upwelling region, the East African nation of Somalia was once thought to have real potential for developing national, sustainable fisheries for tunas, sharks and lobsters. The abundant and diverse marine resources, including seabirds, whales, whale sharks, and several dolphin and turtle species offered promise for sportfishing tourism and ecotourism. The potential for rational development of these resources disappeared with the collapse of President Siad Barre's regime in 1991. Since that time no national government has represented Somalia before the international fisheries commissions, chaos endures across the regional tribal sectors and coastal fisheries have been unmanaged.  

The lack of centralized authority created a gold rush atmosphere among many high-seas commercial fleets and the waters off Somalia were filled with vessels from France, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Taiwan, Italy and a variety of small nations providing flags of convenience for other EC fleets. The old Somali fleet of four trawlers has fled to Aden.
 

Today it is commonplace to read of another oil tanker or large cargo vessel being seized by Somali-based pirates. Reuters and other news agencies have reported that in large part the impetus for this has been the overfishing by foreign fleets that has forced coastal fishers to take to the sea in acts of piracy to feed their families. While there is probably some truth in this claim, the reality has been that left ungoverned, the rich Somaliland waters have provided a bonanza for foreign fishing fleets in recent years. Much of this effort was shifted from the Atlantic Ocean, thus providing some respite for tuna stocks under the authority of ICCAT.
 

In 2005, three Taiwanese fishing vessels were seized by Somali pirates. They were held for six months before being released upon the owners’ payment of half a million dollars in ransom. In 2007, another Taiwanese vessel was held for five months before a $200,000 ransom gained its release. Last April, another Taiwanese vessel, the MV Win Far was seized and has yet to be released. This incident was on the minds of many, especially the Taiwanese, during last November’s ICCAT meeting.

 

BACK AT ICCAT
 

Although the fate of bluefin tuna dominated the discussions at last year’s ICCAT meeting, a number of nations, including again the U.S. and most African countries, were demanding real action to reduce the effort on juvenile tuna in the Gulf of Guinea. Catches had continued to fall, the fish taken continued to get smaller and the scientists continued to insist that without significant reductions in fishing mortality on juvenile yellowfin and bigeye the spawning stock biomass would continue its dramatic decline. Many at the meeting also expressed concern that pending reductions in bluefin quotas would force even more effort onto the immature fish.
 

At meeting’s end some token action was taken to reduce bluefin quotas, but again the bigeye/yellowfin problem was brushed under the table. Well, not exactly. In response to pleas from Taiwan, ICCAT decided to allow 11 Taiwanese vessels to move from the “increasingly dangerous” Indian Ocean back into the Atlantic and back into the Gulf of Guinea. Other nations are expected to seek the same protection for their vessels next year. Instead of a solution, we saw the problem worsen.

 

“THE WINGS OF A BUTTERFLY…”
 

It has been said that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can set up a delicately connected course of events leading to a hurricane in the Atlantic. From Somalia to the Gulf of Guinea, across the neglected legal obligation of dozens of sovereign nations to uphold their treaty commitments and manage Atlantic tunas in a sustainable manner, and on to the U.S. where reduced migrations of yellowfin and bigeye will dampen the joy in and reduce the value of our sport fisheries for tunas, the interconnected breezes of neglect are affecting U.S. anglers.