Europe adds to weight banning Bluefin Tuna

Tokyo (AFP) Feb 22, 2010 - Japan opposes plans to list the Atlantic bluefin tuna, which is highly prized in sushi and sashimi, as a most-endangered species and to ban its international trade, an official said Monday. The UN-backed wildlife trade agency supports a call to stop cross-border trade in the fish when 175 member nations to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meet next month in Doha, Qatar. Marine wildlife experts say that, despite fishing quotas, bluefin tuna stocks have plunged by 80 percent in recent decades in the Western Atlantic and Mediterranean, threatening the predator species with extinction.

Japan -- which consumes three-quarters of the global bluefin tuna catch from both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans -- says it opposes such a trade ban and prefers other mechanisms to make the catch more sustainable. Farm and Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu said this month that Japan's answer to the proposed trade ban is "a clear no", and a fisheries official said Monday that Japan may "take a reservation" and ignore a ban if it is passed. "We have been saying that is one of our options," Shingo Ota, a senior negotiator for Japan fisheries, told AFP. "We are not saying we will definitely reserve it. We are doing our best so that it won't be adopted. Our final decision will come after the vote." The EU Commission was on Monday due to propose that the 27 EU governments ban commercial bluefin tuna fishing, at a meeting of farm and fisheries ministers in Brussels, sources have told AFP. France, the biggest producer of bluefin tuna for consumption, has spoken in favour of a ban, but for a limited duration and not for another 18 months. But Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Malta have opposed a ban.

Atlantic bluefin tuna, a metallic-blue hunter up to four metres (13 feet) long, roams the Atlantic but returns every spring to the warmer waters of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the Gulf of Mexico, to spawn. In the hunt for the prized fish, industrial-scale fishing fleets have often used spotter aircraft and helicopters to locate tuna schools and scooped the fish up with giant drag nets. Many of the fish are fattened up in offshore cages to produce a low-cost version of "toro" or fatty tuna, which is highly valued in sushi and sashimi, mostly for export on freezer ships to Japan. As bluefin tuna has become more rare, its price has shot up, especially in East Asia. A single fish, weighing up to 650 kilograms (1,400 pounds), can fetch as much as 120,000 dollars, CITES has said.