Bluefin tuna protection system ‘full of holes’

BBC
6 November 2010 An international system of tracking tuna – a vital tool in the preservation of stocks – has been found to be full of gaps, reports Steve Bradshaw. In Japan, diners are being urged to curb their craze for one of their favourite kinds of sushi – unless Mediterranean suppliers can prove it is legally and sustainably caught. Masanori Miyahara, chief counselor of the Fisheries Agency of Japan, said consumers may have to “just forget about tuna for the time being.” … Spawning stocks of Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna – the kind caught in the Mediterranean – are widely estimated to be down by around 75% in the last four decades, and some scientists believe they might be on the verge of collapse. … The Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – which has spent months analysing the trade – calculates that more than one in three bluefins caught in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean between 1998 and 2007 was fished illegally. The illegal catches gave rise to an off-the-books trade in bluefin tuna, conservatively valued at $4 billion, according to ICIJ. … In Japan, Mr Miyahara is particularly concerned about the Bluefin Tuna Catch Document (BCD), a paper-based system of tracking tuna introduced in 2008. The BCD is collated by the Madrid-based secretariat of ICCAT, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. It is meant to be a vital tool in the preservation of stocks, attaching a number to each catch or net-load so it can be followed from vessel to market. … “You can use this for really good things, but there are so many holes in this data that it’s not much better than a pile of papers,” said the ICIJ’s Kate Willson. “You’re looking at about 80% of all of the purse seine catches missing something: it doesn’t have a country, it doesn’t have any kind of import information – some information that would let me know if this fish was legal.” Most tuna is now caught at sea by purse seine fishermen, and then taken live into ranches where it is fattened. …