Paris (AFP)

Will the fishing industry be able to protect bigeye tuna in the Atlantic? This question will be at the heart of discussions that open Monday in Spain, after a failure in 2018, when the health of the oceans worries more and more.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is meeting in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, until 25 November. It brings together about fifty states fishing in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Based on scientific expertise, supported by NGOs, ICCAT sets fishing levels for several species of tuna (tuna, skipjack, marlin, swordfish) and sharks.

At the end of 2018, in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the same actors had already looked into the future of bigeye tuna, which is appreciated in both canned and sashimi, whose population is declining dangerously. The alarm was sounded in 2015: stocks of Thunnus obesus, or bigeye tuna, suffer from overfishing and high mortality of juvenile tuna.

"The bigeye stock is very bad," confirms Daniel Gaertner, researcher at the Research Institute for Development (IRD), who is part of the scientists responsible for assessing the state of stocks.

A year ago, ICCAT members failed to agree on a reduction in fishing quotas and the idea of ​​including new countries in these quotas.

The current quota of 65,000 tonnes only concerns the main fishermen in the Atlantic, including Japan and the European Union. Others escape catch limits. As a result, in 2017, total catches approached 80,000 tonnes, a level that leads to overexploitation of these fish.

In Palma de Mallorca will be considered a proposal to lower this quota between 57,500 and 60,000 tons, until 2022. Countries having taken more than 1,250 tons of bigeye tuna per year on average between 2014 and 2018 will also be set a limit.

Brazil, Belize, Curacao, Panama, Senegal, Cape Verde and Ghana could be subject to quotas, according to the document.

- Global warming -

For the NGO Pew Charitable Trusts, "a quota of 60,000 tons would be too high," says to AFP Grantly Galland. This level of fishing would lead to "a period of recovery too long" for populations of bigeye tuna, says the expert of the NGO which pleads for a limit of 50,000 tons.

Other species will be on the ICCAT menu: yellowfin tuna, which has been the subject of a scientific assessment for the first time, or sharks. In the case of yellowfin tuna, the annual quota for 2020 and subsequent years of the multiannual program is 110,000 tonnes (...) and will have to remain in place, "the committee recommends.

WWF recommends that certain areas be closed to fishing during certain periods to reduce catches of juvenile bigeye and yellowfin tuna.

For IPNLF, an association that supports small-scale anglers, the measures taken should take into account "the special rights of developing coastal states".

Regarding sharks, a text from Senegal recommends that "all shortfin mako sharks be released, dead or alive". This shark, the fastest, endangered globally as a victim of overfishing, has already benefited this summer from the protection of CITES, which sets the rules for the international trade of more than 35,000 species of wild fauna and flora.

This meeting comes a few weeks after the publication of a special report by the IPCC, the UN climate specialists, on the oceans. In addition to the current overfishing, the warming of the oceans will further reduce the maximum potential for fish catches.

At the end of the 2000s, ICCAT drastically lowered bluefin tuna quotas after years of procrastination. The species was so bad that CITES had considered a ban on its international trade.

After successfully rebuilding stocks of bluefin tuna, scientists and NGOs are now hoping for the same start to save bigeye tuna.

© 2019 AFP