NOAA IRONS TUNA QUOTA continued from Home Page

These differences may well make these high recruitment levels impossible.

Rich Ruais, Executive Director of the American Bluefin Tuna Association, said the Environmental Non Governmental Organizations (ENGO) fund a lobbying campaign for an over-ambitious and unjustified position, with excessive fishing restrictions to achieve maximum sustainable yield (MSY), which is the standard guideline for fisheries management quota decisions.

“They focus on the short-term, over-ambitious, likely unachievable goals for only the west Atlantic stock unit versus the well being of the industry as a whole. This may sound like a minor difference,” said Ruais, “but it has a big impact on the fishing communities in terms of jobs and economic activity.”

Lubchenco’s critics say she has side-stepped the two-line recruitment scenario previously agreed to in 1998 to focus on a faster recovery. But the recovery is already here, fishermen believe, and the tagging data support that belief. Recovery data from the Standing Committee on Research and Statistics (SCRC) shows increased numbers of tuna.

The Lubchenco decision is seen as a dismissal of the 12 years of recovery effort made by U.S. fishermen. They see themselves as the only ones paying a price for reduced MSY and supporting the recovery with real losses.

The debate over whether there is east-west stock mixing is only part of the story. During the 1950s and 1960s the bluefin biomass in the eastern Atlantic was under-utilized. Therefore more Mediterranean fish crossed to the western Atlantic as 1 and 2 year olds.

The SCRS data show that actions and inactions in the eastern Atlantic have a direct effect on bluefin in the western Atlantic. Lubchenco is seeking recruitment levels based on a reality that may no longer exist, said Ruais.

Data from a study based on samples taken from young bluefin in the waters south of New York show that as much as 83 percent of them were born in the Mediterranean Sea. Another study shows that giant bluefin in the Gulf of Maine are largely western bluefin with some mix of eastern giants as well.

The importance of recognizing this fact is that the higher presumed levels of recruitment seen in the 1960s and 70s was thought to have been from western the Atlantic stock. Now, with this scientific data based on chemical analysis of fish, it is plausible that the increased recruitment from that era was a result of low catch rates in the eastern Atlantic which allowed for large migrations of small bluefin across the Atlantic to the west.

Fishermen are further disappointed with the U.S. quota cuts, because the fish they don’t catch will swim back to the Eastern Atlantic where they will likely be caught. The eastern Atlantic quota until very recently has been estimated to be more than 50,000 tons. The more politicized process in the European Community has meant that the U.S. and other western Atlantic countries with quota such as Canada are virtually the only nations with a serious conservation plan.

The bluefin don’t see boundary lines. The nations involved don’t see the Atlantic as the large swimming pool these highly developed swimmers know it to be.