The United States has announced a two-pronged campaign to induce the international community to begin controlling fishing for bluefin tuna — the giant and most valued alpha predator that's caught in waters off Gloucester and New England in late summer and fall.
Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has challenged the international commission that has been given the task of managing stocks of the super-migratory species to take "definitive action" at its November meeting in Brazil, or else.
The "or else," Lubchenco made clear in a statement last week, involves an option for the United States to join a movement to put Atlantic bluefin on an endangered species list under the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora or CITES.
Listing the tuna with CITES would bar international trade.
The movement to put Atlantic bluefin on CITES comes from the principality of Monaco.
Lubchenco announced that the United States would not sign on as co-sponsor with Monaco but "strongly supports Monaco's proposal."
Withholding formal co-sponsorship was explained as an effort at leveraging action from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas or ICCAT.
"The U.S. will consider amending or withdrawing support for the Monaco proposal if ICCAT adopts significantly strengthened management and compliance measures," Lubchenco said in her statement, issued last Wednesday.
The Pew Environment Group, which helped propel Lubchenco, a former Pew Scholar, into her position as President Obama's overseer of oceans and atmosphere, objected to that strategy.
Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group, called it "a lost opportunity," and said the U.S. approach means helping "stave off commercial extinction for this species are even further from becoming a reality."
But Mark Agger, a New York fish dealer, praised the approach announced by Lubchenco, who has often come under fire from fishing industry activists in Gloucester and elsewhere for her approach to fishery regulation.
He said he believed Lubchenco's approach in this case reflected an effort to provide European nations with some backing for their efforts to gain control of bluefin fishing.
"France historically has had a difficult time controlling its municipal workers, farmers and fishermen," Agger said. "(President Nicolas) Sarcozy has been asking for a CITES listing to help control his people. I wouldn't be surprised if he told (Secretary of state) Hillary (Clinton) who told Jane (Lubchenco) this is how to do it."
According to Lubchenco's release, ICCAT has presided over a 72 percent decline in the adult population of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stock of bluefin tuna and an 82 percent decline in the adult population of the western Atlantic stock.
Lubchenco said, "In recent years, countries that fish the eastern stock, which spawns in the Mediterranean, have done so at two or three times the sustainable level, causing a significant and rapid decline in the last decade."
"The status of the western stock, which spawns in the Gulf of Mexico and is fished primarily off the North Atlantic coast has recently stabilized due to the establishment of well-enforced, science-based quotas," she added.
"A sustained lack of science-based management for the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stock of bluefin tuna, and concerns about slow recovery in the West, have brought us to this point."
Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com
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