Government urged to support listing of Bluefin tuna as an endangered species
The Maltese government should cease backing further futile imposition of unenforceable restrictions on the tuna industry and fully support Monaco and the USA in their proposal to list the Bluefin tuna as an endangered species, Din l-Art Helwa said.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) meets this week is meeting in Recife, Brazil, to decide the future of the bluefin tuna.
ICCAT scientists have stated that industrial fishing has drastically reduced breeding stocks in the Mediterranean and east Atlantic and have warned that the population is nearing the point at which it might never fully recover.
The tragedy can only be averted is by imposing a total ban on tuna fishing for a few years in order to allow breeding stocks to build up again to sustainable quantities.
The environmental non-governmental organisation said Monaco proposed protecting bluefin by using another mechanism - listing the species under the CITES convention, and the EU this year came close to supporting that move.
However, the Mediterranean fishing nations Spain, Italy, France, Cyprus, Greece and Malta said in September they would not allow the 27-member EU to give its combined backing to Monaco.
The USA, on the other hand, announced its support for a CITES listing if ICCAT failed to pass strong conservation measures during the Brazil meeting.
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Julian Borg Barthet
Nov 12th 2009, 10:25
We are now at the tipping point of bluefin tuna stocks, anything not done to protect this species is criminally irresponsible. I for one don't want Malta as a footnote in the history books as being one of the countries that fished Bluefin into extinction.