Asia Sentinel

Although the world’s largest tuna stocks are in growing danger of collapse, the countries battling over how to divvy up the diminishing bigeye and yellowfin tuna in the Pacific Ocean are giving no ground. They met recently in Busan, Korea to argue over the fate of the Pacific’s stocks, which account for 55 percent of the tuna eaten worldwide, but refused the advice of their own scientific committee to make drastic cuts in the amount of tuna taken, settling for a far smaller cut in the catch and probably guaranteeing a thinning fishery.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, which governs the annual catch, met as environmentalist activists circled them with a plan, for instance, to publicize the inaction by stuffing a large fake bigeye tuna into a coffin and marching it around outside the posh Lotte Hotel in downtown Busan where the commission was holding its annual conference behind closed doors and away from the prying eyes of the press and the environmentalists.

The environmental activists – Greenpeace members from across the world and the Korea Federation for Environmental movement, the country’s largest environmental group, intended to dress in traditional Korean hemp funeral garb in a publicity stunt designed to bring attention to scientific evidence that the Pacific stocks are in deadly decline.

The Busan police had different thoughts on the idea. They cited an obscure regulation that funeral processions couldn't be held in public places and the environmentalists were forced to leave the coffin-stuffed tuna back at the docked Esperanza, the largest expedition ship of the Greenpeace fleet. South Korea, where a tin of Dongwon tuna is the cheapest form of protein next to chicken eggs, is not a fertile place for opposition to tuna fishing. There was little attention in the Korean media about conservation measures to protect the fish.

In the week prior to the conference, Sari Tolvanen, 31, a Greenpeace activist, strung a giant “SOS TUNA” banner on the locally famous Haeundae Beach, but she garnered little response from the public at large. Nonetheless, the environmentalists were in force at the congress-like setting as the delegates argued over the fate of the Pacific’s stocks.

The fishing grounds the commission has authority over range from the Hawaiian Islands to the coast of the Asian continent and down to the far South Pacific waters of New Zealand and Australia. In monetary terms, they are in charge of managing a fishery worth US$4 billion to US$5 billion. It is an endangered one, with fishing capacity across the globe now exceeding available stocks fourfold, according to a February, 2008 study by the United Nations Environment Programme, with the Southeast and Northwest Pacific Oceans particularly in danger.

But, according to the study, “A major reason why the decline has not become more evident is likely because of advances in fishing efficiency, shift to previously discarded or avoided fish, and the fact that the fishing fleet is increasingly fishing in deeper waters.”

"Basically the big fishing nations are not agreeing to scientific advice and would rather make a compromised deal. Scientists having been saying since 2001 that bigeye and yellowfin tuna are in decline," Tolvanen told Asia Sentinel at the conference. "There's word going around that there are ‘non-cooperating members’ that are not acting in good faith. They were very vocal and were interpreting international law as it suits them and not how the rest of the world interprets international law."

The non-cooperating members turned out to be Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan. They are the nations that catch the highest numbers of tuna in the Pacific and throughout the week-long meeting they often refused to cede their positions in the face of hard science and the law of diminishing returns.

The science in question is from the commission’s own scientific committee, which has issued repeated warnings that bigeye and yellowfin stocks are in steep decline. The scientific committee recommended a 30 percent reduction of the catch for bigeye tuna. Yellowfin are also overexploited but not as threatened as the bigeyes. Skipjack and albacore are currently considered to be fully exploited as a fisheries resource and could later become vulnerable.

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written by papatekusa , January 22, 2009

The animals survial condition is more and more bad. Many animals and plants disgusting

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