Japan is the largest consuming nation of bluefin tuna where they are highly prized as sashmi. There is a report that one single fish can fetch US$160,000 at auction in Japan. Scientists have warned that Atlantic tuna are a mere shadow of their former selves. Since the 1970s, it is estimated that numbers of tuna have reduced by more than 80 percent. Monaco has proposed a global trade ban on bluefin tuna and was extensively discussed at last fortnight’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) conference in Doha.
However, the ban was rejected at the CITES meeting as the nomination was voted down 68 to 20, with a further 30 countries sitting out of the vote. Australia voted for the fishing to continue saying that the fish would be better managed with restricted fishing, allowing international monitoring to continue.
Environment Minister, Peter Garrett in a press release that imposing a blanket prohibition on international trade through an Appendix I listing would undermine international fisheries management and cooperation to protect this species. The blame for the failure has been leveled at Japan because Tokyo lobbied hard for the fish to remain unrestricted by CITES, which lead to green groups damning the Japanese in the world’s media.
Oliver Knowles, from Greenpeace’s Oceans informed that by pushing for a few more years of this luxury product it has put the future of bluefin, and the future of its own supply at serious risk. The Japanese, with a population of 127 million require a lot of fish to feed. In international negotiations Japan has so far been active in campaigning for continued fishing. Japan has been implicated in misdemeanours at sea.
In 2006 an international collection of scientists issued the warning in the prestigious journal Science that at current levels of fisheries management, or mismanagement as the case may be, all commercial fishing will be dead in the water by 2048. That means no more seafood for anyone in just 38 years.
