As the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) prepares for its annual session beginning next week, environmentalists and the industry alike are preparing to lobby for the commission to address tuna fishery management issues.
The session is scheduled to run from 10 to 17 November. This week, Pew Charitable Trusts issued a series of detailed recommendations it plans to present to ICCAT.
“The Pew Charitable Trusts is encouraged by the progress the Commission has made in recent years toward more sustainable management of tunas and improved compliance with existing management measures,” the organization said in a statement. “Still, additional actions are required to ensure restoration of healthy populations of all managed species across the ICCAT Convention Area.”
Among the recommendations, Pew called for improved catch data collection, electronic bluefin tuna catch documentation, and new measures to manage the use of fish aggregating devices in tropical tuna fisheries.
EU fishing industry group Europêche has also weighed in, offering recommendations of its own. It called for an increase of bluefin quota to 23,155 MT in 2016, despite that quota being planned for 2017.
“Europêche bases its position on the latest scientific evaluations, according to which abundance indices are at record highs, the biomass is above the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and fishing mortality is below sustainable levels,” the group said in a statement.
Europêche also called for more controls of blue and mako shark fishing in the Atlantic, calling a fishing freeze and harvest control rules “essential.”
Both Europêche and Pew called for more transparent and stricter monitoring and controls to prevent illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
