Fisheries Committee Asks For A Recovery Plan For The Bluefin Tunaff

The European Parliament will debate and vote, under consultation, on a proposal for a regulation laying down technical measures for the conservation of certain stocks of highly migratory species. In a report by the Fisheries Committee, MEPs point to a risk of collapse in the bluefin tuna stocks, asking the EU and the Member States to urgently introduce control measures which will help to resolve the problem of overfishing, accompanied by a recovery plan.

The report mentions that, according to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), current catch levels of bluefin tuna are not sustainable in the long term with the present exploitation patterns.
 
The European Union should propose measures to rebuild the stock to ICCAT "as a matter of urgency", say MEPs, including a recovery plan and control measures which will help to resolve the problems of overfishing and the underreporting of catches.
 
The report by Rosa Miguelez Ramos (PES, ES) also calls the Commission and the Member States to pursue an active policy to defend these measures in international fora as a matter of urgency, particularly vis-à-vis the regional fisheries organizations (RFOs) responsible for managing this resource and countries which are the main destination for this species, such as Japan.
 
The growing demand for this species has caused an increase in fishing pressure, both for direct sale and for supplying specimens to tuna farms, which requires, on the part of the EU and the Member States, "strict monitoring and improved information on both fishing and farming activity", since this is vital in order to be able to make a scientific assessment of the state of the resource.
 
The objective of the Commission proposal is the transposition into EU law of the technical measures adopted by the RFOs responsible for the management of tuna species to which the European Community is a contracting party.
 
The technical measures concern the minimum size of fish, the ban on the use of certain fishing gears, closed fishing areas and seasons, and capacity restrictions. These measures have been modified at the annual meetings of the RFOs, and the law in force therefore needs to be adapted and updated.