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Oil Price

CITES fails to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:10
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THE representatives of countries meeting in Doha, Qatar, for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species’ (CITES) 15th Conference of the Parties have voted against including Atlantic bluefin tuna in Appendix 1.
OCEANA, the world’s largest ocean conservation organisation, released the following statement from senior campaign director Dave Allison today following the vote.
“In a clear win by short-term economic interest over the long-term health of the ocean and the rebuilding of Atlantic bluefin tuna populations and fishery, CITES today voted to deny prohibition of the international trade of the species.
“In an additional attack on transparency of action by the international community, Iceland called for a secret vote that prevented the countries votes from being disclosed
“Although there were repeated calls from delegates from the E.U., U.S., and Monaco to allow time for parties to meet and arrive at a compromise position, the Libyan delegate forced a pre-emptory vote on the E.U. proposal which resulted in a 43 to 72 vote, with 14 abstaining. The final vote on the Monaco proposal was 20 to 68, with 30 abstaining.”
WWF has responded saying that they will proactively call on restaurants, retailers, chefs and consumers around the world to stop selling, serving, buying and eating this endangered species. Already a growing body of the global seafood market sector is choosing to avoid Atlantic bluefin tuna to give the exhausted fish stocks a chance of recovery – including such groups as Carrefour Europe.
“After overwhelming scientific justification and growing political support in past months – with backing from the majority of catch quota holders on both sides of the Atlantic – it is scandalous that governments did not even get the chance to engage in meaningful debate about the international trade ban proposal for Atlantic bluefin tuna,” said Dr Sergi Tudela, Head of Fisheries at WWF Mediterranean and observer at the CITES Conference of the Parties in Doha.
Once the Principality of Monaco had tabled the proposal this afternoon and a number of countries had given brief interventions, Libya called for an immediate vote on the proposal.
“The regional fisheries management organization in charge of this fishery – the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, ICCAT – has repeatedly failed to sustainably manage this fishery,” said Dr Tudela. “ICCAT has so far failed miserably in this duty so every pressure at the highest level must come to bear to ensure it does what it should.”
“It is now more important than ever for people to do what the politicians failed to do – stop consuming bluefin tuna,” Dr Tudela said. 
The Principality of Monaco – the CITES member country that submitted the proposal for a CITES Appendix I listing of the species – became last year the first country in the world to be entirely bluefin tuna free. WWF is urging other countries to follow suit. 
Inclusion of Atlantic bluefin tuna in CITES Appendix I would have banned international trade in the species.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas’ (ICCAT) Standing Committee of Research and Statistics (SCRS) has estimated that the North Atlantic bluefin tuna spawning biomass has been decimated to less than 15 percent of its unfished biomass, with the sharpest decline occurring in the last decade. Environmental organisations argued prior to the Doha meeting that Bluefin tuna meets criterion C “marked decline” for inclusion in CITES Appendix I as a species endangered with extinction.