When the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) holds its annual meeting in La Jolla, Calif., next week, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) wants the group to heed the advice of its scientific staff and adopt conservation measures for threatened tuna stocks in the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO).
“The time for IATTC member nations to act is now,” said Bill Fox, VP and managing director of fisheries for the World Wildlife Fund and vice chair of ISSF. “Two years without conservation measures is two years too long.”
ISSF supports the recommendations of the IATTC scientific staff, which include a 12-week closure of the entire purse-seine EPO tuna fishery, a second 12-week closure for a limited area and restricting bigeye tuna longlining for several years.
“We want regional fisheries management organizations like the IATTC to succeed,” said ISSF President Susan Jackson. “But these stocks can not succeed if member nations fail to follow the sound scientific advice they’re being provided.”
The ISSF Board of Directors and its Science Advisory Committee recently red listed EPO bigeye on the ISSF Status of the Stocks, bringing attention to the need for conservation measures to end overfishing.
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