Following last week’s Kobe III meeting in California, pressure is mounting among Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) representing more than 50 countries to strengthen commitments to fight illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing of tropical tuna (skipjack, yellowfin and bigeye), bluefin tuna and swordfish.
With Europe’s largest fishing fleet, Spain was particularly vocal in defending the need to harmonize the lists of tuna vessels, claiming it would optimize the fight against IUU fishing and unify the lists of IUU vessels currently published by RFMOs.
A member of the Madrid-based International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), Spain claims that the establishment of a unique ship identification number would make it easier to apply measures to reduce pressure on fish stocks.
Spain is also behind calls for improved scientific data collection of all tuna and swordfish fleets to present their data to scientific committees in order to measure the status of individual stocks and to provide the basis for future decisions on these fisheries.
San Sebastian, in northern Spain, hosted Kobe II in 2009, while Kobe I took place in Kobe, Japan, in 2007.
Supporting calls for a complete list of IUU vessels as designated by RFMOs — in addition to the development of traceability of tuna products from capture to plate — the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) states in its 2010-12 strategic plan: “Today, vessels have the capacity to fish more tuna than would be ecologically sustainable. And few countries police vessels flying the national flag, nor do they have the capability to enforce compliance by vessels within their waters.”
Taking direct action over monitoring, control and surveillance, ISSF calls on processors, traders, importers, transporters and other seafood industry operators “to refrain from transactions in tuna caught by vessels that are not on the authorized vessel record of the geographically appropriate RFMO.”
Spain is bound by ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) Record of Vessels regulations. They include vessels over 20 meters unauthorized to fish for tuna or tuna-like species; carrier vessels authorized to receive transshipments of tuna and tuna-like species from large-scale tuna longline vessels; and bluefin tuna-catching vessels authorized to fish actively in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea.
