GENEVA — Stocks of Mediterranean bluefin tuna, prized for
sushi dishes, could collapse if the European Union does not slash quotas for the
coming fishing season, the conservation body WWF International said on Thursday.
If tuna numbers drop dramatically, the resulting food chain
imbalance would bring a serious decline in the population of sardines, a staple
in many diets and a cornerstone of the region’s fisheries industry, WWF said.
"The EU can still choose ... not to be one of the parties
responsible for driving tuna to the brink. Fisheries management in Europe must
take a new path," said Julian Woolford, head of WWF’s European Fisheries
Campaign.
In a briefing paper issued a month before this year’s tuna
fishing season begins in the Mediterranean, WWF blamed the situation primarily
on the Madrid-based International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic
Tunas (ICCAT).
It said ICCAT, made up of 42 members plus the 27-member EU,
in assigning national catch quotas, ignored advice from its own scientists who
recommended a 50 percent cut in the total tuna catch and closure at the peak of
the spawning season.
Instead, ICCAT accepted a plan which only reduced the total
2007 catch by 2,500 tons, against the 17,000 cut the scientists wanted, and
closed fishing only from July, leaving the tuna especially vulnerable during its
peak spawning period.
Further, Turkey and Libya had objected to the ICCAT quota and
unilaterally increased their own planned catch.
Experts estimate that wide-scale illegal fishing takes the
total actually caught in the Mediterranean to 50,000 tonnes — "more than three
times the amount considered sustainable or safe by scientists," WWF said.
It called on the European Union, which accounts for the bulk
of the overall Mediterranean tuna catch allocation and determines the quotas of
its own members, to hold back on 50 percent of the total assigned to it by ICCAT.
If EU members, among which France, Spain and Italy take most
of the catch, cut their own quotas to preserve the tuna "it would help to reduce
the threat of collapse and encourage other fishing nations to follow suit," the
WWF paper said.
Over the longer term, it added, disappearance of the tuna, a
top predator, could have a "catastrophic impact" on species further down the
chain — leaving squid, which feed on sardines, to proliferate and undermine
sardine stocks.
"It is the traditional tuna fishers who will suffer the most direct impact
from the stock’s collapse," said Sergi Tudela, Head of Fisheries at WWF
Mediterranean. "The large fleets will move on and plunder a different ocean and
a different species."
