Atlantic Tunas Slipping Enforcement Net, U.S. Complains

WASHINGTON, DC, October 30, 2003 (ENS) - A U.S. fisheries official says a regional group for managing and protecting stocks of Atlantic tuna should start getting tough on its own members about supplying required accurate catch numbers.

Testifying today before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, Dr. William Hogarth, assistant administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service, said the lack of data for some tuna populations is crippling compliance efforts by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). Hogarth was briefing Congressional representatives ahead of ICCAT's November 17 to 24 annual meeting in Dublin, Ireland.

At the Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans of the House Committee on Resources, Hogarth said that with late or inadequate data ICCAT's Standing Committee for Research and Statistics (SCRS) cannot make good stock assessments and the group cannot effectively manage the fish stocks.

Dr. William Hogarth is assistant administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service. (Photo courtesy NMFS )

In an exchange with subcommittee members, Hogarth said he believes some failures to report have been deliberate, done by countries in order to evade enforcement of quotas on harvesting the depleted bluefin tuna populations in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Because the east and west stocks of bluefin tuna overlap, ICCAT's existing scheme for managing the stocks separately is viewed as ineffective.

Even though European Union and other countries' fishing fleets operating in the eastern Atlantic have a quota 10 times larger than that for the western Atlantic where U.S. fleets operate, compliance with limits on harvesting the eastern stock is viewed as inadequate.

U.S. fleets have long accused EU fleets of harvesting migratory bluefins from the western stock.

"To make matters worse," said Hogarth, "bluefin tuna farming has made data collection and verification even more difficult for that species."

Hogarth also mentioned that the Commerce Department is investigating whether the European Union is improving what he called its "lax data collection regime." Under a section of U.S. law known as the Pelly amendment, the United States could impose trade sanctions against imports from other countries that act to undermine international conservation measures.

Hogarth said ICCAT will convene a working group to examine bluefin management on November 15, a year since the United States insisted on such a working group at the previous ICCAT annual meeting.

Hogarth is one of three U.S. commissioners scheduled to attend the Dublin meeting. Another is Glenn Delaney, who represents commercial fishing interests.

Delaney told the subcommittee that the bluefin tuna situation in the eastern Atlantic is "out of control," and expanded on Hogarths concerns over tuna farming.

Measuring the length of a bluefin tuna caught in the Bay of Biscay, Atlantic Ocean 1990. (Photo by Jose Cort courtesy NOAA)

"We will have to wait until November to see what the official numbers are, but we are hearing credible reports that bluefin landings in the eastern Atlantic may be as much as 50,000 metric tons," he said, "substantially above the ICCAT quota and about twice the level recommended by the scientists,"

Much of this fish is going into farming pens, Delaney said, and he called into question the correct reporting and accounting of this harvest.

Delaney laid blame for the fish farm underreporting at the door of the European Union, but said European countries are not alone in contributing to the problem. "Nearly all of the nations bordering the Mediterranean contribute to the chaos," he said, "particularly those on the north African coast."

Some conservation organizations are opposed to bluefin tuna farming. According to a 2002 WWF report on tuna farming in the Mediterranean, tuna penning, or caging of tuna for fattening, "is severely threatening the dwindling populations of wild tuna."

In view of this threat, the conservation organization is calling for a moratorium on the development of new tuna farms in the Mediterranean, until its environmental impacts, particularly on tuna stocks, are addressed at the international and national levels.

"This new practice is expanding the market for bluefin tuna, resulting in a further increase in fishing effort," says Dr. Sergi Tudela, fisheries' officer with WWF's Mediterranean Programme.

Farmed tuna is higher in oil content than wild tuna, which makes it desirable for sushi. Wild tuna are put in cages and fattened to improve the oil content of the flesh in order to meet Japanese market standards. Exports of farmed tuna from the Mediterranean region to Japan shot up from 200 to about 4,300 metric tons in three years, WWF says.

In its report to the commission, the SCRS has recommended that a bluefin tuna working group be convened to consider all issues that relate to this species. The SCRS said its most important concern is that if there is to be a coordinated bluefin research program, there must be a full time coordinator, and that $250,000 is requested for the start-up year.

The Research and Statistics Committee report suggests the working group would be coordinated by Dr. Joseph Powers of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, who presented initial budgets on the order of two million dollars annually for three to five years.

Bluefin tuna sushi is made more appealing by capturing wild tuna and penning them for fattening. (Photo courtesy Catalina Offshore Products)

Regarding assessments of species other than bluefin, a working group that oversees the scheduling of SCRS activities said that the committee's workload in 2004 and 2005 is already jammed.

The commission mandates assessments for West Atlantic bluefin tuna and for blue and shortfin mako sharks in 2004. In addition, the Tropical Species Group is considering a skipjack analysis for 2004.

The 2004 schedule also includes a Bigeye Tuna Year Program Symposium and a Second World Meeting on Bigeye Tuna, which have been already agreed to.

The other two meetings proposed for 2004 are a workshop on environment to examine the incorporation of environmental data into standardization and stock assessments with regard to the catch per unit of effort .

A data revision meeting for eastern bluefin tuna is also scheduled in preparation for the 2005 assessment mandated by the Commission.

A workshop on swordfish stock structure is proposed for late 2004 or early 2005.

The commission may be too busy in 2005 to assess populations of Atlantic swordfish, East bluefin, white marlin and blue marlin, the working group said.

Noting that with the available means it would be difficult to prepare for both billfish and swordfish assessments in the same year, and considering the "optimistic fishery indicators discussed in 2003 for swordfish," the working group recommended that the SCRS and Commission consider postponing the swordfish assessments until 2006.

The Standing Committee for Research and Statistics observed that many of its recommendations require an increase in the workload of national scientists and can only be carried out with the corresponding support, through human resources and access to information.

The Committee notes "increasing difficulties in the access to the necessary fisheries information and to funding," and recommended that participating governments "facilitate the scientists and provide the resources necessary to carry out their mandate."