March 31st, 2007 — Environment and Ecology, Pets and Animals
Tags: Bluefin Tuna, WWF
2007 could be the year that the magnificent bluefin tuna, the fish behind the finest sushi in the world, disappears from the Mediterranean.
Take action now to save bluefin
Over recent years, high-tech fishing fleets have hunted down, often illegally, ever declining numbers of these ocean giants. So much so that bluefin tuna could soon be commercially extinct.
In May, the bluefin tuna fishing season starts again. But rather than acting to stop this tragedy the European Union has set fishing quotas at a level more than twice as high as science recommends. As a result the fishery is likely to collapse.
Send an email to the governments of France, Spain and Italy - the main bluefin fishing countries in Europe - and ask them to take responsibility for their fishing fleets. Ask them to set aside or allocate half of their fishing quotas this year for conservation.
(Via WWF Passport)
Popularity: 1% [?]
November 9th, 2006 — Environment and Ecology, Pets and Animals
Tags: Bluefin Tuna, Mediterranean
The Atlantic bluefin tuna is an amazing creature. A warm-blooded fish, it accelerates faster than a Porsche and covers thousands of kilometres in its lifetime.
But the fish, which swims into the Mediterranean each year to reproduce, is facing a crisis. Prized for sushi in Japan and across the world, the high demand for this valuable fish has led to huge illegal industrial overfishing. This has been fuelled in turn by the massive expansion of tuna farms in the Mediterranean in the last ten years, where wild tuna are caught, put in cages and fattened up for export.
Please sign our petition asking the European Union (EU) to support urgent measures to save tuna – before it is too late.
If this unscrupulous fishing continues the species could be biologically and commercially extinct in a few years.
There is one last chance to save the bluefin tuna. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is meeting this month in Croatia and will decide how to manage the fishery in the Mediterranean over the coming years.
Most of the illegal fishing of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean is by EU fleets – yet Europe’s representative at ICCAT is still resisting a strict recovery plan.
Take action now and sign the e-petition, which WWF will present to the EU representatives at the ICCAT meeting.
(Via WWF Passport)
Popularity: 1% [?]
