Update: Tuna & Ocean Conservation

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article updating the continuing crisis that surrounds the demise of large ocean faring fish like Blue Fin Tuna and what is being done about it by individual nation states and multilateral organizations.

I've already written fairly extensively on the decline of the Blue Fin tuna, the state of global fisheries, and even regional situations such as the Pacific Salmon along the coast of British Columbia, Canada.

To review, the bad news is that despite attempts to limit harvesting to preserve tuna and other species through regional fishery management systems, global fisheries on a whole are in severe crisis. The obvious culprits are global fishing fleets that scavenge the world's oceans using modern vessels, satellite tracking, and sophisticated fishing gear to maximize their haul and profits. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that, "Some 80 percent of commercial fish species are either fully exploited, overexploited, or collapsed." No less than nine of the world's 23 tuna species worldwide are “fully fished” and without immediate action all will face collective extinction in the years to come.

Furthermore, rampant exploitation motivated by commercial interests are again threatening the global commons and the viability of life in the open oceans.

Globally, $9 billion is lost to so-called pirate fishing, according to a study last year by the University of British Columbia and Marine Resource Assessment Group. In the Pacific alone, [illegal, unreported, and unregulated] (IUU) fishing takes 36 percent of the total catch, compared with a 19 percent global average.

These pirate fleets who plunder the global commons are a "huge problem in tuna fisheries across the western Pacific, particularly in “doughnut holes,” international waters between [exclusive economic zones] boundaries. In these waters, reflagged ships often use fish aggregating devices (FADs) that attract juvenile yellowfin tuna."

On the other side, there are international and regional compacts that may come to fruition next year that will give some reprieve to the tuna and other threatened species. For example,

The Obama administration... last month unveiled the outline of a comprehensive “ecosystem-based” plan to restore health to US ocean waters, including coastal fisheries. Among several measures, US fisheries would be pushed toward science-based instead of politically based catch limits. If the plan works, the United States could become a global model: It controls more ocean in its 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZ) than any other nation.

To improve the situation the following steps will have to be minimally implemented. They include:

• Restricting gear that is too good at catching fish. Nets with larger holes let younger fish escape, for example.
• Closing hard-hit and breeding areas to fishing to let them recover.
• Drastically reducing the number of fishing vessels chasing the fish.
• Reducing the total allowable catch.