bluefin tuna

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.

As you may or may not recall, we used to do a weekly round-up of ocean news called the Oceana Scanner. Then it got lost in the hustle and bustle around here and we let it go. Well, it's back! At the end of each week I'll post the most important ocean-related stories from around the web.

Without further ado, this week's edition: Decisions, decisions.

This week in ocean news,

...The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) meets in Morocco to discuss quotas for crashing populations of bluefin tuna.

...Thanks to the tanking economy, thousands of boat-owners have abandoned their vessels at marinas, leading to toxic "junkyard flotillas."

This week (Nov 17 - 24) the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) meets in Marrakesh, Morocco to discuss the state of Atlantic tuna. Along with Greenpeace and the Blue Ocean Institute, Oceana has called on the United States to push for a complete moratorium on the catch of bluefin tuna throughout the Atlantic basin.

Oceana's editor Suzannah Evans recently interviewed Taras Grescoe, author of the new book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. In the book, he circles the globe on a twofold mission: to consume exotic seafood and to explore why fish, crustaceans and marine mammals are disappearing. Drawing on the research of renowned fisheries scientist and Oceana board member Dr. Daniel Pauly, Grescoe explains the overexploitation of the seas and how we might restore the abundance of seafood for future generations. To read the full interview, visit http://oceana.org/newsletter.

Was there anything you couldn't bring yourself to eat? Because of the issues or you just didn't want to?

There were so many things I did eat, and my M.O. was to be an adventurous eater, but to have a list of seafood, things I wanted to try, things I hadn't yet tried. And as I became educated, [I would] cross things off the list. I was taking the reader through this process.

In Japan, there are 450 kinds of seafood on the market, I didn't eat gooey duck - not too many issues associated with it. Pufferfish, I ate. I regret eating whale. I'll never do it again, but it was interesting to figure out how to fit into Japanese culture. There are things I'm still interested in trying, particularly when it comes to mollusks and crustaceans. The one thing that was really problematic was live shrimp in Shanghai.

A new study in this week’s Science finds that the two distinct Atlantic bluefin tuna populations – those spawned in the Gulf of Mexico and those spawned in the Mediterranean Sea – meet during their juvenile years in the Atlantic before returning to their respective natal homes to reproduce.

In addition to being fascinating (the authors studied isotopes found in juvenile tuna ear bones used for balance, called otoliths, as they contain chemical markers delineating water composition), the study underscored a very important point about bluefin tuna conservation.

While there are two distinct spawning grounds, the tuna intermingle – meaning that U.S. fisheries may actually be catching eastern, Mediterranean tuna, and vice versa.

Why does this matter?

Today, Oceana board member Ted Danson weighs in on the fate of bluefin tuna on the BBC's Green Room, a weekly series of opinion pieces on environmental issues.

Ted says, "Since the mid-1990s, tuna populations have spiralled downward, and scientists warn that an immediate moratorium on fishing is the only way to avoid an irreversible collapse ...Time is running out to save these sleek and powerful fish."

From an early survey of the (many!) comments, it seems the British people agree with Ted, although one smart guy notes "you don't have to be a genius or Ted Danson to know the problems the oceans face from overfishing."

True enough - but sometimes it takes star power to bring an issue into the limelight.

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.

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

For a little more than a month, Oceana's vessel the MarViva Med has been roving the Mediterranean documenting and exposing illegal fishing, among other activities, and writing about it on their blog.

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.