Mediterranean tunas are ending up the platters of restaurants around the globe. Roberto Mielgo Bregazzi, a Spanish expert and author of several reports for Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, said that Japanese consumption was already a threat to bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean. The European craze for sushi bars has added to that. He added that is the Chinese market continues to grow, that will be the end of the stock.
Bregazzi told that recently there had been a significant increase in tuna consumption in China. The increasing figures are also observed by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), a body responsible for managing bluefin tuna fishing. Jean-Marc Fromentin, a leading worldwide expert on the subject at the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), informed that Japan, however, remains the main consumer of bluefin tuna. Around 80 to 85 percent of bluefin tuna caught in the Mediterranean is exported to Japan.
As the demand for tuna has increased remarkably the supply also surged. Accoridng to ICCAT today more than 50,000 tonnes of bluefin tuna are caught every year in the Mediterreanean. To prevent stocks from collapsing, that figure should be limited to 15,000 tonnes in the short term, says ICCAT. Greenpeace oceans campaigner Karli Thomas opined that the bluefin tuna industry is in the process of fishing itself to death. He said that the risk now is that the depletion of tuna will wipe out the fishing sector, and cost thousands of jobs in the Mediterranean region.
