Bluefin Tuna quotas ?

[David Lee]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101117...tfishtunaiccat

D.~

[Darian]

Setting quota's doesn't seem to be something the EU or Japan can agree on. I can't understand why the Mediterranean EU members don't see their future is going down the drain in this. I guess it's just another instance of greed and short term thinking. The price of sushi grade tuna in Japan is what drives this market.

If realistic quotas can't be established, Atlantic Bluefin numbers will be reduced until it's no longer feasible to fish them. Then, these fisherman will target Pacific Bluefin/Yellowfin Tuna. Tuna nets are already in use in SoCal and Mexican waters. Apparently not at the same level, tho.

[Jgoding]

Yeah it's sad. Time to buy a nice cold storage unit, catch a few fish and wait to sell them for a million bucks each when they're all gone I guess..... Either that or the ICCAT needs to go straight to implementation phase, buy a russian submarine and have fun with it.

[David Lee]

I had heard that the Med population is down to somewhere around 5 to 8%? of what it was just 100 years ago ? Down so much that the fishermen of Corsicia or whatever place it is that they drive the Tuna into a shallow bay for harvest-by-hand have gone nearly fishless for the past few years .

I was watching 'No Reservations' a few days ago ..... A.B. gave the short history of Sushi - a whopping 100 year old cultural tradition in the current form that we all know . Candida and I gave up eating Tuna (unless it was line caught , and we were where it was caught) a few years ago - still a difficult change , but we felt it was immoral to continue eating them w/ current harvest numbers being what they are .

As long as Bluefin or any other Tuna fetch the $$$$ that they currently do ... things won't change . Pretty sad ....

D.~

[Hairstacker]

It is pretty sad. It'll be interesting to see what quota the Japanese push for.

France admitted going more than double over its authorized limit a few years ago -- were there any repercussions for that? In other words, are quotas even meaningful?

[luckydog]

Establishing private property rights to fisheries might be an approach to sustaining fisheries into the future. In short, the theory is that it is in the best economic interest of the holder of the fishing rights to manage their fishing on a sustained yield basis. This approach is being used in Chile... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0914095930.htm

Here is an article describing this management approach, http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj1n2-1.html

It does have some disturbing implications. Fish and wildlife resources in all but a few states are considered the property of the people of the State. This is in deliberate contrast to the European system, e.g. "The King's Forest".

This common ownership is the basis for our State regulated hunting and fishing laws and regulations. This is the system we all know and grew up with. Yet it is because of this common ownership that we have seen our resources diminish. Anyway, it is something to think about.

[DFrink]

It's pretty sad in general how most of our store bought fish is harvested these days. We (my wife and I) don't eat a lot of fish for this reason (unless we're camping and I keep one or two for breakfast). This is a bummer because I LOVE fish. You read the stories about farm raised fish (another topic) and it makes it sound pretty un-appetizing.

Dan

[Jgoding]

There's a pretty good documentary on the subject. ICCAT has no official authority really when you look at it. Quotas they set are seen as good targets but of course it's about making money so they just harvest whatever they can. They were calling countries because they're spotters planes were still flying around when ICCAT said no more spotter planes and they basically got shite on and laughed at.

Japan of course says they want to protect the fishery but at the same time they're investing in more cold storage and had like 60,000lbs of fish in storage already and it's speculated they want to fish them into extinction while sitting on the largest stockpile of frozen stocks which was owned mostly by Mitsubishi.

Like I said, call a moratorium on bluefin, back it up with a few torpedoes and maybe people will start talking about restricting catches....

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

We might go to war over food some day?

Kind of like "Road Warriors"?

HS.....I love your "cone head".......

[Darian]

In the case of US commercial fisherman, one of the answers to this dilema may be that direct cash an indirect subsidies provides incentives to keep the industry going when it already overfishes many or all fish stocks. Check out the following article about this:

www.ewg.org/fishing-subsidies

Subsidies contribute to "boom/bust" cycles in fishing populations due to overfishing. As pointed out in the article, the problem isn't limited to the US. It's world wide.