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Highly Migratory Species Report

by John T. Koegler

(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association December 2000 Newsletter)

ICCAT Advisors Meeting

 ICCAT advisors met in Silver Spring MD on October 28-30 to advise the three US ICCAT Commissioners on matters that affect US commercial and recreational fishermen. The international ICCAT meeting will begin on November 15 and continue until November 23 in Morocco.  A key item of business is to approve a Blue and White Marlin rebuilding plan.  This plan should slow the sharp decline in the stocks of blue and white marlin. If observed, a Marlin recovery plan will rebuild the stocks and eventually achieve Maximum Sustainable Yield. Everyone wishes them luck and support for achieving this goal in an 8-day meeting.

ICCAT's primary mission is their plan for Bluefin tuna recovery. 1999 was the second year that the Eastern zone nations were under national quota regulations. Initial national reports raise very serious questions about their compliance. The ICCAT scientific arm (SCRS) writes that unless the European member nations report their total landings correctly, there is little the SCRS can accomplish or advise.  A quick review of the ICCAT report finds 2,700 Mt of 1998-year specific landings are totally missing from the 1999 report. Totals of Eastern zone Bluefin Japanese shipments show that member nations sold Japan 3,400 Mt. more Bluefin tuna than these nations reported to ICCAT. This suggests that ICCAT member nations are at least 6,100 MT or about 20% over their 32,000 Mt. quota without questioning the honesty of their national landing reports. Such clear quota cheating makes ICCAT's future questionable. Meanwhile, the US practices strict unilateral conservation.  Unilateral conservation accomplishes little in an ocean-wide HMS fishery. Unilateral US conservation will never rebuild the Bluefin tuna stocks alone!

 To put this issue in perspective, the current ICCAT quota is 2,500 Mt for the Western Atlantic

(US, Japan, Canada) and 32,000 Mt for the Eastern Atlantic. The Eastern quota is 12 times that of the Western zone quota. New ICCAT approved satellite-tagging reports indicates 12% to 58% of our (Western) conserved bluefin travel to the Eastern Zone yearly. In order for the two stock theory to work, the crossover can be no higher than 2%.  Such huge crossovers prove beyond any doubt that the current ICCAT plan that assumes there are two separate stocks is wrong. At the very least, the Atlantic Ocean dividing line between Eastern and Western zones must be moved immediately to reduce the Eastern landing of our conserved tuna. Our conservation allows the eastern nations to postpone regulations while catching and selling our conserved tuna. This point is strongly supported by ICCAT's 1980 data that reports Western Landings as 5,800 Mt vs. 14,000 Mt for the eastern zone. Sixteen years later eastern landings had exploded to over 52,000 Mt. This is over a 300% increase above their 1980 landings.  Can anyone prove the eastern nations did not get these huge landing increases by catching and selling OUR conserved tuna?

In addition to Bluefin, there are major problems with Yellowfin and Bigeye tuna.  In 1997 ICCAT passed a voluntary plan to restrict purse seine fishing around FAD's during their Africa yearly spawning time. This voluntary regulation was ignored and the over harvest of baby yellowfin and bigeye tuna continued. This November's meeting will vote on a 4-month closure of the spawning area to ALL fishing gear.

ICCAT has serious new problems with Southern Hemisphere nations. These nations want a piece of the South Atlantic quotas despite the fact that they never had a fishery for HMS species in the past. They are demanding the current holder's quota be shared with them. Nations like Brazil and South Africa are developing a high seas fishing fleet or allowing fishing nations like Taipei and China to base major fishing fleets at their ports. These new quota demands had little success, so far. Meanwhile, these nations continue to build new HMS fleets and overfished HMS without any regulations. Continued overfishing of the HMS species by so many nations will soon destroy all HMS fisheries.

 An indication of how huge this problem is; US longliners land less than 5% of the various HMS tuna species. To land this 5% the US reports deploying more than 11 million hooks per year. If expanded Internationally this totals 220 million hooks set yearly. (11 million hooks x 20 (times 5%)= 220 million hooks yearly).  ONE million hooks are set every day for 220 days a year. Such massive fishing will destroy all HMS stocks. It is clear that half-hearted international measures will have little success in rebuilding any HMS stocks. What is required is a huge drop in the number of commercial hooks or nets set! Given the vast size of the national subsidies paid to HMS fishers this is a tough objective. If a major reduction is not planned almost immediately these fisheries will die from lack of fish to sell.

At some point in the near future depleted Highly Migratory Species will come under international trade agreements as endangered species. CITIES had results with their tough no-trade rules that slowed the extinction of land-based species. Whether such rules will work for HMS fish in unknown. However, by the time CITIES gets to impose their tough no trade rules, there will be no tuna or Marlin species that will be able to recover to sustainable levels in our lifetime!        

Two years ago ICCAT gave US fishermen a tiny bluefin tuna quota increase to reward them for their strong conservation. At that time ICCAT promised another quota increase if the 2000-year assessment indicated an improved stock size.  The Western stocks were much larger due to two outstanding year classes in 1995 and 1996. These two-year classes were so large that with no quota increase the 50% rebuilding objective would be exceeded by 15% or 25% depending on the statistical model used. These year classes, if they reach sexual maturity, would achieve ICCAT's rebuilding plan in 10 years instead of the planned 18 years. A small increase of 500 Mt to 3,000 Mt for the Western quota was proposed at the public advisors meeting:

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