Amanda Nickson, Global Tuna Conservation director for The Pew Charitable Trusts. (Photo: The Pew Charitable Trusts)

Environmentalists accuse Japan of not abiding by bluefin tuna catch quotas

JAPAN
Tuesday, April 25, 2017, 01:50 (GMT + 9)

Japan is to break its commitment as to the international Pacific bluefin tuna catch limit, undermined by lax compliance, which has worried conservationists due to the resource weak status.

Official estimates have revealed that the Japanese bluefin catch reached 99.7 per cent of the agreed-on quota for the 12 months ending in June, NIKKEI reported.

In this regard, Amanda Nickson, the director of global tuna conservation at Pew Charitable Trusts pointed out that the country, by far the world’s biggest consumer of Pacific bluefin, has caused “great frustration” with its failure to abide by catch quotas intended to save the species from commercial extinction.

“Just a few years of overfishing will leave Pacific bluefin tuna vulnerable to devastating population reductions,” Nickson claimed.

On the other hand, the sector’s representatives recall that in 2015, Japan adopted limits on catches of immature bluefin, following a decision by the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. However, the total capture has risen by several tons a day, despite warnings and calls for restraint by Japan's Fisheries Agency.

Experts in the field are convinced that part of the problem is that bluefin specimens are inadvertently caught by ships fishing for other seafood. But the regulation also appears not to have sunk in with all of Japan's fishing industry. The agency reported this month that some 132 tons of bluefin had been caught under improper circumstances, such as without being reported or by unapproved fishers.

Meanwhile, fishing ship operators complain that the quota is unevenly distributed as coastal waters off Japan have been divided into five blocks for bluefish fishing, with further subdivisions in areas where the tuna is common, such as off of Nagasaki. In some cases, complying with the limit requires releasing caught bluefish out in the open ocean.

"There are problems with the distribution of the blocks," said Masaaki Sano, a professor at Kagoshima University in southwestern Japan.

Given this situation, campaigners support the fisheries commission’s aim of rebuilding stocks to at least 20 per cent of unfished levels by 2034 – a target Nickson said was “realistic and attainable”. She said further inaction could revive calls for a two-year commercial moratorium on catching Pacific bluefin.

In addition, Aiko Yamauchi, the leader of the oceans and seafood group for WWF Japan, said it was time to penalise fishermen who violated catch quotas.

In the conservationists’ view, the Fisheries Agency has tried to please both the international community and the domestic fishing industry with threats of punishment for violators on the one hand and concessions such as redistributing the quota on the other. But Japan's inability to enforce its own commitment is likely to add to pressure from Western nations for regulations that in practice amount to a ban of bluefish fishing. 

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