Europe

Last week's hopes for the future of bluefin tuna have essentially been dashed today as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) meeting in Morocco comes to a close.

Oceana called for a closure of the bluefin tuna fishery to allow stocks to recover, but parties instead agreed to an unsustainable Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of 22,000 metric tons for 2009. Proposals for a TAC of less than 15,000 metric tons for the eastern stock, which was in line with scientific advice, were tabled but rejected.

Since 2006, researchers from Oceana Europe have visited harbors in Europe, Africa and South America, where they talked to fishermen, scientists, processors and trade companies about the current state of European shark fisheries.

Their travels resulted in several reports and many photographs documenting the plight of sharks, a sampling of which you see here.

This week, the International Union for Conservation of Nature began its 10-day World Conservation Congress in Barcelona. Thousands of people representing academia, NGO's, businesses and governments are attending the event in order to debate, learn and voice their opinions on the environment.

As a part of the event, Oceana's Ranger catamaran is participating in Sailing to Barcelona, which is a gathering of marine conservation vessels in the Spanish port city. Xavier Pastor, the Executive Director of Oceana Europe, joined the Director of Fundacion Biodiversidad at a press conference today where they shared the most important aspects of the Ranger's expeditions and displayed many beautiful underwater images taken by Ranger's crew.

Three of London's Nobu restaurants, a chain which is partly owned by Robert De Niro, have been secretly serving endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna, Charles Clover reports in the Telegraph. Bluefin tuna belly meat, or toro, is prized by many sushi chefs for its high fat content.

Nobu is apparently patronized by celebrities such as Madonna, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. In other words, a very high profile place has been serving a mislabeled endangered species -- who knows how many others are doing the exact same thing.

While I would normally send you to our seafood guide and tell you to look out for bluefin, this article speaks to the larger, more complicated problem of how to place the blame. Who's at fault here? Not the consumers, they were misinformed. Was it the restaurant? The fishmonger? The fishermen? The government who makes the regulations? A global cultural apathy about the source of our seafood? Or some combination of the above?

As promised on Monday, a post devoted to Taras Grescoe’s Bottomfeeder, which I just finished reading.

I’ve heard Grescoe called the “Michael Pollan for the oceans,” and I think that designation is pretty accurate. They are both compelling writers -- Pollan deals with the land and how it feeds us (and how we treat it in return), and Grescoe does the same for the oceans.

It appears that jellyfish have invaded not just the oceans but the media, too.

Last week I told you about our marine scientist Margot Stiles' cameo on the CBS Early Show to talk about the jellyfish invasion. They aired a longer version of the story Sunday evening -- check it out. They included quite a bit of footage from our European office of jellyfish and our roving catamaran, the Ranger.

In the famed Tokyo fish market, a single Bluefin tuna can fetch $100,000.

BBC Two has sent a team of scientists and film-makers aboard a Norwegian research vessel exploring the fjords near Svalbard.

It’s been said over and over again: Eastern bluefin tuna cannot handle the pressure they face from overfishing. These sleek and powerful fish are unlucky enough to be among the world’s most coveted seafood species, and for years scientists have called for a moratorium as a last-ditch effort to save these genetically pure, irreplaceable creatures. While strict quotas have been in place for years, poor quota enforcement and illegal fishing have driven the bluefin to the brink of extinction.

On Monday, the European Union ended the fishing season for most of the Mediterranean’s purse seine fleet, the ships that are responsible for 70 percent of the Med’s caught tuna. This move could save up to 100,000 bluefin this year alone.

Oceana has been carefully monitoring the purse seine fleet with our new boat, the MarViva Med. We have recorded rarely-seen images of bluefin fattening pens and documented purse seiners illegally using spotter planes in their pursuit of the fish.

I didn’t anticipate that the E.U. would react so quickly and shut down the season well before its original July 1 end date. But our work is far from over. The next step is to make sure that the closure is enforced, and that non-E.U. fishing outfits don’t start targeting tuna as well. We will be watching.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has some sad news: the Caribbean monk seal is extinct. The last confirmed sighting of the seal was in 1952, and it's the first type of seal to go extinct from human causes. Perhaps this will be a wake-up call to protect the remaining Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals, both of which are endangered and at risk of extinction.