A tale of two fisheries: Tuna and pollock

How to pillage the oceans deliberately, and by accident

THERE are two ways to overfish the sea. One is to ignore scientific advice and plunder on regardless. The other is to accept the advice, and then discover it isn’t good enough.

For decades the Atlantic bluefin-tuna fishery has fallen into the former camp. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the group charged with managing this fishery, has been a disgrace. Every year, its member states have handed themselves quotas far in excess of those prescribed by the organisation’s scientific advice. Last year things were so bad that ICCAT’s chairman warned members that if they did not do better their power to manage the bluefin would end up being taken away from them. But they failed to restrain themselves, and the backlash has begun. Earlier this year Monaco proposed that the bluefin be listed in Appendix I of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). Such a listing would ban all international trade while the stock recovered.

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Tags: atlantic bluefin tuna, atlantic tunas, backlash, blue fin tuna, disgrace, endangered species, fauna and flora, fisheries, international trade, oceans, plunder, pollock, quotas, tuna fishery, wild fauna

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Consider This, Economist, Innovation Needed, The Food Challenge, environment, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.