International Fishing Meeting Ends with Praise and Scorn by Conservationists

The closure of a meeting this week by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) left conservationists with points to praise and scorn. The ICCAT called for catch quotas of Atlantic bluefin tuna to remain unchanged, while also rejecting proposals to install catch limits on some shark species.

ICCAT, which has members from 46 countries and the European Union, decided not to increase bluefin tuna catch quotas, leaving the 2014 catch limits at 1,750 metric tons in the western Atlantic and 13,400 tons in the eastern Atlantic.

Sergi Tudela, head of fisheries for the World Wildlife Fund, said the announcement was good news.

"It was very important for ICCAT to stick to science and to follow the scientific recommendations against some pressure from the contracting parties to increase the quota this year," Tudela said, according to Bloomberg News.

Tudela said the WWF congratulates member countries of the ICCAT for not raising tuna catch limits.

"This is a good sign for the credibility of ICCAT. However, failure to address countries' failure to comply with rules remains an issue of grave concern," Tudela said.

The catch quotas, which were introduced in 1998, remain at about half the level they were at in 2005, Bloomberg reported, adding that both the WWF and the Pew Charitable Trusts have both called for the quotas to remain unchanged so to allow for the recovery of overfished populations.

Masanori Miyahara, the ICCAT chairman, said that it will be at least one more year before the commission considers raising catch quotas.

"Research is going on but we haven't received the outcomes yet. We have worked very constructively and the results are very good for the stocks," he said, according to Bloomberg.

A move to install catch limits for mako sharks and blue sharks did not go forward, despite an abundance of scientific evidence in favor of catch limits, Luke Warwick, a shark specialist at Pew, told Bloomberg.

"They did nothing. Governments really didn't even get into the detailed debate," he said.

According to the WWF, China, Japan and Korea were radically opposed to a proposal meant to strengthen the current bans on shark finning by obligating fishing boats to land with sharks fully intact.

The group said it "deplores the failure of member countries to impose stronger protection for vulnerable sharks and lack of a clampdown on rule breakers."