IUCN: Tuna species urgently need protection – Southern bluefin tuna ‘critically endangered’
Paris (AFP) July 7, 2011 – The reference organisation for the conservation status of Earth’s animals and plants said for the first time Thursday that most species of tuna are urgently in need of protection. Five of eight tuna species are now threatened or nearly threatened with extinction due to overfishing, according to the Red List of Threatened Species, compiled by the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The report is being released ahead of a July 11-15 meeting in La Jolla, California of the world’s five regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs), intergovernmental groups set up to insure that tuna fisheries remain sustainable. Southern bluefin tuna stocks have already crashed with little hope of recovery, resulting in a “critically endangered” status, the IUCN reported. Atlantic bluefin — with populations in both the east and west fished to the edge of viability — is now officially “endangered.” All bluefin tuna species “are susceptible to collapse under continued excessive fishing pressure,” said Ken Carpenter, a professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and the head of the IUCN’s Marine Biodiversity Unit. Other tuna species under sharp pressure from high-tech factory ships that comb international waters in search of ever-dwindling stocks include bigeye, classified as vulnerable, along with yellowfin and albacore, both ranked as “near threatened.” […]
