September 1, 2017 — TOKYO — The world’s Pacific bluefin tuna won something of a reprieve Friday, when tuna-fishing countries reached an agreement to gradually rebuild severely depleted stocks while still allowing nations such as Japan to catch and consume the delicacy.
Japan — by far the world’s biggest consumer of bluefin, eating about 80 percent of the global haul in the $42 billion tuna industry — had been resisting new rules, while conservationists have warned about the commercial extinction of bluefin in the Pacific Ocean.
Proponents of limits hailed the deal as a compromise that everyone could live with.
“It’s definitely a good first step towards the recovery of the species,” said James Gibbon, global tuna conservation officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “But it is only the first step. There are a lot of commitments that the countries agreed to, and we need to make sure they stick to them.”
At the week-long meeting in Busan, South Korea, the two bodies charged with shared management of Pacific bluefin — the northern committee of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission — hammered out a plan to try to put the fish back on a path to sustainability. Countries represented at the meeting included the United States, Canada, China, South Korea and Japan.
The Pacific bluefin population has been depleted by more than 97 percent from its historic high, because of overfishing.