Governments at ICCAT approved a 2011 bluefin fishing quota of 12,900 tonnes: a small decrease from last year\u2019s quota of 13,500 tonnes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe word \u2018conservation\u2019 should be removed from ICCAT\u2019s name. Governments have just agreed to a bluefin fishing plan that scientists conclude has a shocking one-third chance of failing to protect the species. Would you get in an airplane or car if you were told that it had a 30% chance of crashing?\u201d asked Greenpeace International oceans campaigner Oliver Knowles.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite repeated warnings from scientists, the ICCAT delegates have again bowed to narrow fishing interests and condemned the bluefin to suffer continued overfishing. The Mediterranean bluefin fishery should have been closed here at this meeting. This is a monumental failure of the way governments are supposed to protect our oceans.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the environmental campaign group, the European Union and France, the host country, were the architects of this failure.<\/p>\n
The total quota approved by ICCAT contravenes EU legislation which makes mandatory the recovery of stocks by 2015 and 2020 at the very latest, Greenpeace said.<\/p>\n
Japan also went back on promises made earlier this year to ensure bluefin protection at this ICCAT meeting, it added, saying the agreed quota is \u201csimply not compatible\u201d with stated intentions to restore bluefin populations.<\/p>\n
Greenpeace has been calling on ICCAT to close the Mediterranean bluefin fishery and protect key spawning grounds for the species.<\/p>\n
Discussions earlier in the year at the European Union and the UN Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) had indicated that a more positive result might be possible at this year\u2019s ICCAT session.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is appalling that the governments gathered here were unable to finally put the brakes on this slow-moving crash of an environmental disaster. Instead, the European Union used its political muscle to ensure the continuation of the tuna farming business responsible for the current situation,\u201d said Knowles. \u201cThis outcome confirms that the bluefin\u2019s days are numbered and has demonstrated ICCAT\u2019s inability to act on its own mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The failure by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas to deliver any meaningful rescue for Atlantic bluefin tuna is a huge setback in the fight to save one of the most overexploited fish species, claims Greenpeace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3670,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3668\/revisions\/3670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3668"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}