Nations at southern bluefin tuna meeting stop short of adopting new seabird protections

Seabird protections drew debate at the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), held Oct. 5-8 in Brussels. The eight-member multilateral body that manages the stock has long struggled to curb seabird deaths caused by longline fishing targeting southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) across several oceans. This year’s meeting saw a modicum of progress on the issue. Based on recent modeling, the parties agreed on 13 priority seabird species for conservation efforts and designated high-risk areas for them. However, the designations don’t carry any new mandatory protections: Due to the reluctance of some members, the commission stopped short of adopting proposed conservation measures for the high-risk areas, most notably tighter seabird bycatch mitigation requirements. Oliver Yates, head of the marine program at BirdLife International, a U.K.-based NGO, told Mongabay that the identification of high-risk areas was “a good step forward” but said it was a problem that “they’ve not then adopted any management action to accompany the fishing activity in those spatial areas.” “[T]hey recognise bycatch of seabirds is a very serious issue but again agreed to do nothing about it,” Yates, who attended the Brussels meeting, added in a text message. There are more than a dozen RFMOs in the world, with some overlapping geographically but managing different fish stocks. The map shows the five best-known and most commercially important RFMOs, which focus on tuna and tuna-like species. Image courtesy of Pew Charitable Trusts. Sources: U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO Map Catalog.…This article was originally published on Mongabay