EU halts bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean

The European Commission closed the industrial tuna fishing season early (June 16th as opposed to end of month), provoking a wave of protest from Europe's leading fishing nations. With quotas nearly full, and substantial illegal fishing reported again this year, the EU executive said that fishing in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic needed to be halted early to protect the species.

The move targets fishing by purse seiners, which account for 70% of all bluefin tuna hauls. Spanish ships are allowed to fish until June 23rd.

The commission said an early closure was all the more necessary this year because the purse seiner fleet had grown substantially since 2007 despite tougher international quotas and EU funds available for reducing fleets. "The commission is determined to use all necessary means to prevent a recurrence of the substantial overfishing seen in 2007" it said.

Illegal fishing for bluefin tuna is still rampant in the Med. Last week WWF and Greenpeace caught Italian planes spotting tuna schools from the air in the central Mediterranean. Spotter planes are illegal in the area, as they give too strong an advantage to a massive hi-tech fleet that is already far larger than the capacity recommended by scientists for the survival of the species and the fishery.

Since the Mediterranean tuna fishing season opened at the beginning of May, WWF calculated that over 10,000 breeding bluefin tunas were caught every day by the industrial fishing fleet.

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For more information:
- EU tightens controls over BFT fisheries
- WWF report on BFT overfishing in the Med

Turtles in trouble

The Marine Conservation Society together with the Travel Foundation and design company Juniperblue have recently produced an entertaining and educational cartoon called Turtles in Trouble.

The 8 minutes long animation is for everybody planning holidays in the Mediterranean, but it includes valuable advice relevant to all destinations where marine turtles may lay eggs.

The video effectively shows how simple changes in our behaviour while on holidays can make a big difference. As the video points out: “Turtles are in danger of extinction, and extinction is forever. But doing your bit, you can give this spectacular animals the chance to survive for generations to come”.

Silvia Bonizzoni

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To watch the video: Turtles in Trouble

Where have all the sharks gone?

Several species of sharks in the Med have almost disappeared, their numbers 97% below what they were 200 years ago.

This is the scary figure that emerges from a new research (Loss of large predatory sharks in the Mediterranean), founded in part by the Lenfest Ocean Program, just published on Conservation Biology.

Fishing (both direct and by catch), coastal degradation and lack of management, coupled with the life history of sharks (who grow slowly, mature late and produce few young) caused this massive loss.

Blue, thresher, mako, porbeagle and hammerhead sharks have almost totally vanished in catch records from all sorts of different sources (tuna traps records, coast guard, fishing market, recreational fishing tournaments data) over the years, the authors found.

The consequences on the ecosystem of losing these key players is still poorly understood, as populations of other fish and invertebrates shift in unpredictable ways. But the extent of this collapse "may hold serious implications for the entire marine ecosystem, greatly affecting food webs throughout this region,” said the lead author of the study, Francesco Ferretti, a doctoral student in marine biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

Better management of shark fisheries is clearly needed to reverse this trend.

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For more information:
- The press release
- The Lenfest Report "Shark Declines in the Mediterranean sea: a summary of a new scientific analysis"
- Ferretti et al. 2008. Loss of large predatory sharks from the Mediterranean Sea. Conservation Biology.

New publication on the Pelagos Sanctuary

Back in 1990, the Tethys Research Institute proposed to the “European Association Rotary for the Environment” a project for the establishment of a marine protected area, a Biosphere Reserve, in the high seas encompassing the most important habitat for cetaceans in the region.

The rationale behind the proposal, which was named “Project Pelagos”, included the ecological representativeness of the area, its high species diversity, its intense biological activity, the presence of critical habitat for a number of pelagic species including cetaceans, and the opportunities that the area offered to baseline research.

Now, almost 20 years later, the pioneer of Pelagos Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara and other four authors published a comprehensive review on the Cetacean Sanctuary.

‘The Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean marine mammals’ provides a description of the rationale behind the initial proposal and an overview of the challenging process leading to the creation of the Sanctuary, a unique area that contains habitat suitable for the breeding and feeding needs of the entire complement of cetacean species regularly found in the Mediterranean Sea.

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To download the article:
Notarbartolo di Sciara G., Agardy T., Hyrenbach D., Scovazzi T., Van Klaveren P. 2008. The Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean marine mammals. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 18:367-391.

For more information:
www.cetaceanalliance.org
www.tethys.org