Six meetings – No decisions. Classic committee meetings as tuna stocks are decimated

Fishing vessels taking in yet another tuna haul in the Tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean while the IATTC fails to take adequate action. Credit J Jimenez

June 2009. The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) is the intergovernmental management authority comprised of 16 member countries with the mandate to regulate fishing fleets to avoid overexploitation of tuna in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. For the past six meetings over more than two years the IATTC has not taken a single decision to manage tuna populations. So tuna populations must be doing great, right? Wrong.

Exactly the opposite is true. As member countries bicker over the details of how to avoid further depleting stocks, tuna is not recovering. And it is not just conservation groups that say so, but rather the IATTC's own scientists. With increasing urgency at meeting after meeting these highly skilled fisheries experts have used some of the best fisheries information in existence as the basis for recommending a suite of urgently required specific, decisive actions to avoid over-fishing of tuna stocks.

Bigeye tuna on downward spiral
Things are not looking good for the fish, especially the region's bigeye tuna. These highly prized fish may be on the same downward spiral that have taken bluefin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean to the brink of economic extinction.

Jobs at risk
And it's not only the fish that are at risk. Tens of thousands of jobs in poor communities that dot the coasts of Latin America depend on tuna processing for their livelihoods. Fisheries operators and government representatives at the IATTC argue that adopting the recommended management actions would have dire economic consequences for these people, as well as tuna boat operators and their crews.

All talk and no action - IATTC. Credit J Jimenez.

International Seafood Sustainability Foundation
So who will look after the future of tuna? If recent history is repeated at the IATTC meetings this week in La Jolla, California, it will not be the IATTC. Fortunately, market mechanisms may force the IATTC's hand. A new consortium known as the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) is bringing together tuna processors, scientists and environmental non-governmental organizations to get behind the IATTC and other fisheries management organizations so they base management on scientific recommendations aimed to protect tuna stocks and reduce their impacts on non-target species such as dolphins, turtles, sharks and seabirds.

If the IATTC does not act soon, it will fall to consumers to make their tuna purchases from responsible processors and brands that offer fish from areas that are acting to ensure that tuna populations stay healthy for the long term. This would be not only good business and good news for the fish, but also for the consumers that enjoy tuna that is responsibly captured. But for now, all eyes are on the IATTC.