Activists Say Fishing Limit Not Enough to Save Bluefin Tuna

13 December 2010

Bluefin tuna being cut up on a Japanese fishing vessel

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

An international group has set the limit for next year's catch of bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. The limit is just under thirteen thousand metric tons. That is six hundred tons less than this year's quota, a reduction of four percent.

Conservation groups criticized the move, saying the cut is not big enough to support the recovery of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas set the catch late last month in Paris. Delegates to the commission represent the governments of forty-eight fishing nations.

In two thousand six, the commission established a plan to stop overfishing. The goal is to rebuild bluefin populations in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean by twenty twenty-two.

The European Commission had called for reducing next year's catch to six thousand tons to improve the chances for the huge and highly valuable fish. But Mediterranean members of the European Union rejected that proposal even before the ten-day meeting began.

Still, EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki said the meeting took "a step in the right direction for sustainable management" of bluefin tuna.

The fishing industry wanted to keep the existing catch limit.