Information on NCMC's conservation efforts for sailfish, marlin, swordfish, tuna, and sharks

NCMC BRIEFS CONGRESS ON BLUEFIN CRISIS

11/5/07  On October 22nd, the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans invited NOAA Fisheries chief William Hogarth and NCMC president Ken Hinman to give a briefing on the bluefin crisis.  A week after Cong. Frank Pallone (NJ) introduced a resolution calling on the U.S. to get tough with countries ignoring the science and hastening the demise of the bluefin tuna, Hogarth announced October 17th that he will seek a total moratorium on tuna fishing in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea at future meetings of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).  Dr. Hogarth serves as both chairman of ICCAT and head of the U.S. delegation.

The Atlantic’s population of bluefin tuna consists of two separate stocks that mix on feeding and fishing grounds.  Both stocks are severely overfished – the weaker western stock, which spawns in the Gulf of Mexico, is at only 18 percent of what it was in 1975 and shows no signs of improvement despite years of tight restrictions.  The larger eastern stock, which breeds in the Mediterranean, is at 48 percent of the 1970s level and dropping fast due to rampant non-compliance with ICCAT rules.

“I fully support a moratorium to save bluefin tuna,” NCMC’s Hinman told Congress.  “I believe a halt to fishing on both eastern and western stocks is supported by the science and needed to avoid catastrophic collapses that may never be reversed.”

But Hinman stressed that, while an end to overfishing in the east would help recovery efforts in the west, it’s not the total answer to our problems.  “If the recent collapse of our New England fishery for giant tunas has anything to do with overfishing in the east,” said Hinman, “it only underscores the fact that our fishery has been relying more and more on eastern migrants and that without them, the western population is too small to support a viable fishery on its own.”

He called for an end to longlining on the bluefin’s Gulf of Mexico breeding grounds from March – June, saying that’s the one place and the one time we can give full protection to fish we know are members of the dwindling western spawning stock.

Read NCMC’s testimony from October 22.

Donate to our Bring Back the Big Fish program.

Read more on our Bring Back the Big Fish program.