Casting Comments
Outlook Grim for Bluefin Tuna

By Robert G. Hayes
CCA General Counsel
TIDE
Jan/Feb 2008

(Editor’s Note: In addition to being CCA General Counsel, Bob Hayes is the U.S. Recreational Commissioner to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). He was appointed to this position by the White House and is serving his second term. He recently attended an ICCAT meeting in Turkey and has written the following column based on the results of that meeting.)

To say that this year’s meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) was a disappointment would be a vast understatement. Faced with a continued overharvest of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, ICCAT chose to do nothing and hide behind a rebuilding plan that won’t rebuild and a compliance plan that won’t generate compliance.  

Bluefin tuna in the Atlantic have been managed by ICCAT since the early 1970s.  In the early ‘80s the U.S., frustrated by the poor management of the Mediterranean portion of the harvest and faced with a continued decline in the western Atlantic, proposed a two-stock theory.  One stock spawned in the Mediterranean (eastern stock) and the other in the Gulf of Mexico (the western stock). The simple concept allowed managers to manage the western stock separately under the premise that it could be rebuilt no matter what the Mediterranean catch was.

About 10 years ago tagging studies began to suggest that the two stocks mixed and fish from both stocks were being caught throughout the Atlantic. About the same time bluefin tuna farms were introduced in the Mediterranean, resulting in significant increases in harvest. ICCAT, in an effort to get its hands around all this, ignored the mixing studies and continued to manage the stocks separately.  

The rebuilding plan for the western stock has been a complete failure, with the U.S. unable to catch its quota for the last three years. Significant reductions in quota in the western Atlantic for 2008-2009 will be followed by even greater reductions in 2010.  For the eastern stock, catches may have exceeded the scientific advice by almost 400 percent for at least the last five years. The ICCAT-adopted quota has been 50 to 100 percent in excess of the scientific advice for the same period.  

In 2007 ICCAT approved a “rebuilding plan for Eastern Bluefin Tuna” that included a quota of 32,000 metric tons, which was 14,000 metric tons higher than the scientific advice and forgave suspected overages over the previous four years of some 70,000 metric tons.

This year, faced with what could be a collapse of the western fishery, a 2007 overfishing plan of the eastern stock and a continued effort to manage the two stocks separately, the U.S. proposed a “time-out” in the form of a three- to five-year moratorium on the take of the eastern stock. Had the idea received any traction at all the U.S. may have offered some limitations on countries’ ability to fish consistent with their ability to enforce the existing plan, but the idea of a moratorium went nowhere. 

The essential problem is the ICCAT member countries, which are more than willing to apply broad sanctions on countries that are not a party to the convention, and are also more than willing to ignore violations of the members.

Domestically, we have a large quota but the stock is in such bad shape that I doubt the U.S. will return to its 2006 quota in the next decade. We are increasing our knowledge of the impact of mixing, which I suspect will show that a significant percentage of the giant harvest is spawned in the Mediterranean. The US cannot expect an improvement in our fishery until there is some control over the eastern fishery.  

The European Union put in regulations in November that may well control its harvest, but the same cannot be said of the rest of the harvesting countries. Even though the North African countries all reported in 2007, there are still reports of excessive harvests and exports to Japan and many suspect they are coming from the North African countries.  Japanese traders still do not have any limitations on the quantity of bluefin tuna they import and it is their market that is driving the demand.  

Atlantic bluefin tuna is on the 2008 agenda for ICCAT. Progress will only occur if there are mechanisms put in place to make members countries comply with the quotas and the quotas are significantly reduced.  To do that will require countries to control harvest and Japan to put import restrictions in place, which would force the harvesting countries to come into compliance.

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