Conservation Efforts Increase for Tuna; Fish Companies, Governments Help Out

Police remove one of the Greenpeace activists from the European Seafood Exposition fairgrounds in Brussels.

EU reducing bluefin quotas, and US study sees decline in quality. Greenpeace wants to shut down virtually all tuna fishing, but other environmental groups think fisheries can be properly managed and certified. IbroMar joins sustainability forces with WWF in Vietnam.

Are world tuna fisheries in deep trouble? Greenpeace activists were out to make that point in April, when they briefly took over stands of five tuna companies at the European Seafood Exposition (ESE) in Brussels, Belgium.

While a rival environmental group, Friend of the Sea, doesn’t think that all tuna fisheries are threatened, bluefin stocks are believed to be so short that European Union governments agreed last November to a 15-year plan that progressively restricts harvests and requires traceability throughout the supply chain. EU members must produce annual fishing plans detailing their allocation of fishing rights.

The University of New Hampshire in the United States published a study last August indicating that the quality of the bluefin catch was in sharp decline, with fewer and fewer A class tuna – the kind with high fat content that taste better and command a higher price.

In 1991, according to Walter Golet, who headed the study, the probability of landing a skinny C+ fish was 16% for August and nine percent for September, respectively. By 2004, that had increased to 68% and 76% for the same months. Lower fat content is bad for the tuna, which need a lot of energy for long migrations, he explained.

“Next year will be a crucial year if we are to save the bluefin tuna,” said EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg in November. “The Commission considers the annual fishing plans to be both a necessary and an effective instrument to avoid overfishing, in view of overcapacity in the EU fleet.”

Grading tuna at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. Overfishing may be impacting the quality as well as the quantity of the fish, according to a University of New Hampshire study.

Minimum landing sizes were increased from 10 to 30 kilograms to help curb catches of juvenile or immature fish. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) administers the EU bluefin tuna catch. The US government has pressured ICCAT to consider a three- to five-year moratorium on bluefin tuna fishing to allow the species to recover.

The EU exceeded its 2007 quota by about 4,000 metric tons due to overfishing by France and Italy, which now face extra quota reductions for 2008. The European Commission was forced to ban bluefin tuna fishing in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic for the rest of the year; at a meeting in Tokyo in March, ICCAT called for stricter recovery goals for bluefin tuna stocks in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

The statement indicated that ICCAT may again cut bluefin tuna quotas at its annual meeting this November. It has already decided to gradually reduce quotas in the eastern Atlantic to 25,500 metric tons in 2010 from 29,500 metric tons in 2007. Among 150 participants in the March session from the United States, European Union and Japan, there was a growing fear that Mediterranean bluefin tuna stocks may be depleted by overfishing if quotas aren’t reduced.

At the International Boston Seafood Show in March, Greenpeace showed up with a “red list” of allegedly overfished species to be avoided that included yellowfin, albacore and big eye as well as bluefin tuna, plus Alaska pollock, Greenland and Atlantic halibut, Atlantic salmon (wild or farmed) and cod, tropical shrimp (wild or farmed) and other familiar species, plus less familiar ones like orange roughy, hoki and ocean quahog.

At the ESE in Brussels, the Greenpeace protesters focused on just tuna, chaining themselves to the stands until police removed them.

But while Greenpeace was denouncing all tuna fishing, and even sending its own boats out to harass tuna fishermen in the Pacific, Friend of the Sea was giving its blessing to some tuna fisheries that it found to be properly managed. Just a few days before the Greenpeace protest at the ESE, the rival environmental group announced that it had found the Sri Lanka deepwater short-lines yellowfin fishery “compliant with Friend of the Sea’s sustainability criteria.”

Wearing bright orange shirts (the color of Holland) sporting the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) logo at the IbroMar stand during the European Seafood Exposition are (left to right) Clarine Louwerse, Martin Brugman and Bruno Govaert. The Dutch company has partnered with WWF in a sustainable management program to insure that Vietnam’s tuna fisheries remain robust and healthy.

The group, which had previously certified the Azorean pole and line skipjack tuna fishery in 2006, said that tuna from Sri Lanka’s Global Sea Foods and Decatrading, and sushi tuna from the Swiss producer Covedis and retailer Manor were covered by the latest certification.

“Yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean is considered not overexploited by FAO (Global Status of Tuna & Tuna like Species, 2007),” Friend of the Sea noted. “The fishery assessed is composed of vessels up to 11 meters in length, deploying an average of 500 hooks per line and operating short seven-day trips.

These small vessels ‘short-line’ fish at depths of 150 meters. Discards are less than one percent as the fishery is much more selective than alternative gillnets and the catch is loaded onboard alive. Tuna catches represent up to 90%, depending on the fishing season. The rest of the catches comprise mainly of swordfish, while the small shark catch represents an ‘insignificant’ relative contribution to the total shark catch in the area.”

“Consumers and buyers should be informed that longliners selectivity can be strongly increased by optimizing factors such as bait species, fishing depth, time of deployment and hooks,” said Dr. Paolo Bray, director of Friend of the Sea. “Sri Lanka deepwater short lines are selective in species and size and can represent an important alternative to higher impact fishing methods for tuna, such as gillnets. Last but not least, the Friend of the Sea certified tuna comes from producers which are being certified also as dolphin-Safe.”

WWF, IbroMar Team Up

Yet another environmental group, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), has joined forces with the Netherlands’ IbroMar and the Dutch and Vietnamese governments in a three-year project to assure the sustainability of long-line fishing for tuna in Vietnamese waters.

IbroMar BV, a key player in the field of high-value frozen seafood, and specialist in superfrozen tuna maintained at -60° C, said it aims to take a leading role in the sustainable tuna fisheries. Combining new fishing techniques, hook training programs for fishermen, improving quality standards and high technology production methods, the company helps to realize sustainable tuna fishing by making it work financially for the fishing communities.

“Maintaining a sustainable tuna fishery is not only of interest to the environment and aquatic wildlife, but also to the fishing industry, from the fishermen to the end consumer,” said Martin Brugman, managing director of Rotterdam-headquartered IbroMar. “We found we share these interests with WWF. It was a logical step to combine our forces in pursuit of our common goal.”

The project, part of IbroMar’s “Business and Biodiversity” initiative, is being co-funded by IbroMar to the tune of $3 million.

Graded tuna is on display for discerning buyers at Japan’s leading fish market.

“We are investing in the future as well as in a dedicated pilot production unit to implement new technologies based on ultra low temperature production of tuna,” Brugman told Quick Frozen Foods International.”

Bycatch of endangered turtles is a growing problem of tuna fisheries in the waters surrounding Vietnam. Research has shown that the use of circle hooks rather than traditional J hooks can reduce turtle by-catch by 80%. WWF aims to ensure that tuna fisheries are ecologically healthy and selective, leading to more sustainable exploitation and long-term economic benefits.

“In IbroMar, we have found the perfect partner to create awareness among the Vietnamese fishing communities,” said Keith Symington, Marine Programme Coordinator at WWF Vietnam.

The goal of the Tuna Sustainability Project is to advance more sustainable management of tuna long-line fisheries in Vietnam, through promotion and application of sustainability tools including environmental certification, bycatch Observer Program, gear modifications, co-management programs, research and development, application of new techniques, training and awareness-raising. The project began in April with MRC pre-assessment of Vietnam’s long line tuna fishery.

A Sustainable Tuna Roundtable in Brussels that wasn’t part of the European Seafood Exposition, although it took place in the same city at the same time, focused on the need for substantial improvements to regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) to ensure global sustainability of commercial tuna fisheries, including the health of tuna stocks and the ecosystem effects of tuna fisheries (e.g., bycatch of sensitive species and of juvenile and undersized tuna).

Assessment, certification and eco-labeling programs were recognized as important market-based incentives to promote fisheries sustainability and to address worker conditions and product safety. Tuna fishing companies recognize that the future of their businesses rely on the success of RFMOs. However, consensus-based decision-making has often prevented RFMOs from adopting measures that effectively curb the growth of tuna fleets, decrease fisheries-related tuna mortality and address bycatch. Low compliance with RFMO measures exacerbates the problem.

“Therefore, the Sustainable Tuna Roundtable participants agreed to increase seafood retailer and tuna fishing industry participation in RFMO activities in order to push for the adoption of legally binding measures that implement the recommendations of the RFMO scientific committees and ensure compliance to them,” said Kitty Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which co-sponsored the roundtable with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.