What's it Like to Fight a Giant?



"It's like hooking up to a car doing 50 miles an hour.  Marlin and sailfish are spectacular.  But they wear themselves out with all their jumps.  Giant bluefin have more power and stamina than anything else."



Jack Cashman

   But, this Premiere Gamefish

is in Deep Trouble            

       

      Its Population Has Crashed      





 

Nearing Extinction - The species in the greatest danger of slipping into extinction is the western north Atlantic population (stock) of bluefin tuna.  Thanks to 4 decades of overfishing, it has been driven to just 3% of its 1960 or pre-longlining abundance - a decline of 97% - as shown in ICCAT's figure at left.  (ICCAT is the international commission that claims management authority over all tunas, marlin, swordfish and the other big fish of the Atlantic)  In comparison to bluefin, Atlantic white marlin abundance has been driven to 6% of its pre-longlining abundance, and Atlantic blue marlin has been driven to 20% of its pre-longlining abundance.



For more than two decades, ICCAT considered the spawning stock biomass which existed in the mid-1970s to be the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) level for the western Atlantic bluefin tuna stock.  (The MSY level is represented by the dashed line at 1.0.)  Responsible fishery managers should never allow the population to decline below the MSY level - ICCAT's stated management goal.  Yet, since 1975, the population has been allowed to decline by an additional 88% percent and it was hovering at12 percent of its 1975 level.  Thus, in just four decades, the population was driven from a healthy level (over 3 times the MSY level) to 3% - a level just above extinction.  This occurred due to years of overfishing sanctioned by ICCAT on this, the world's most valuable fish.  (A single bluefin sold for $172,400 at the first auction of 2001 at Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market.)  The population is being held at this precarious level by continued overfishing allowed by ICCAT, ostensibly to provide scientific monitoring information on its status.  In reality, it is unnecessary to kill any remaining bluefin until they can recover since the abundance of each year class could be assessed using aircraft and other non-lethal means (tagging).  But this would eliminate the large profits continuing to be made by a few dealers with political influence...  Clearly, key members of the U.S. Congress and responsible NMFS officials have been more than willing to "sell-out" the resource for a very long time.   In my view, it's nearly too late.  Make up your own mind.  I think we should call a "time-out" - no more lethal fishing on this stock - for 5 years.  Otherwise, we may lose them entirely.  They are simply too magnificent to be pushed into extinction for the short-term profits of a few exporters.



Endangered Species Act Protection to be Sought - Because of the situation described to the left, Chambers and Associates is beginning the process of developing a petition to have the western North Atlantic bluefin tuna stock designated a "threatened species" and protected under the Endangered Species Act.  We will call for closures to all lethal fishing in the bluefin's concentration areas, particularly its spawning areas in the Gulf of Mexico, its nursery grounds off the mid-Atlantic states and its summer through fall feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine/Cape Cod area.  International cooperation with Canada will be recommended to seek protection of adult bluefin feeding grounds off Nova Scotia.  The petition will also call for elimination of excessive fishing on the bluefin's primary prey species (particularly herring and menhaden) in its main U.S. feeding grounds.



Lawsuit Filed to Protect Spawning Areas - On November 1, 2006, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit challenging the failure of NMFS to limit longline fishing (through the use of closures) in the Gulf of Mexico during their spawning season which is contributing to the decimation of adult bluefin tuna.





 

 Above - abundance of spawning size bluefin (620 lbs. and larger) was last at the long-term sustainable population level (MSY) in the mid-1970s.  It has declined dramatically since.  Conveniently, ICCAT policymakers recently "redefined" MSY at half the level shown above - a clever, but bogus way to avoid having to reduce catches as needed to rebuild the stock.  This was described as "moving the goalposts to the 50 yard line." Incredibly, the U.S. government's representatives to ICCAT agreed to this bogus approach -  but without even consulting their own scientists on its validity. 



Below - using the "new" definition, the latest stock assessment (October 2006) estimated that by the end of 2004, the population of western-spawned adult bluefin - our bluefin - had been driven to 18% of its MSY level.  Regardless of how MSY is defined, the fact is that compared to its abundance before longlines were introduced (i.e., 1960), the population is now just 3% of its former level - a 97% decline.  And, ominously, it is still slowly declining toward extinction, as can be seen below. 

One Stock or Two?

- According to the world's scientific community (as represented by ICCAT's scientific advisory committee), the western and eastern North Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks are two separate and distinct populations that do not interbreed.  Their spawning areas are thousands of miles apart (see Bluefin Spawning Areas).  The western stock spawns in the north-central Gulf of Mexico, from May 1 through June 7, and ranges during the summer through fall along the east coast of North America as far north as Labrador and out into the North Atlantic following the Gulf Stream.  And the lack of prey (herring, whiting, menhaden, etc.) due to overfishing in nearshore shelf waters off New England has likely driven them farther offshore.  The eastern stock spawns in the Mediterranean Sea, primarily in June, and ranges during the summer through fall in the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to south of Iceland.  There are also great differences in the size at which the two stocks mature.  The western stock reaches maturity on average at about 620 lbs. (12 years old) - roughly six times the size at which the eastern stock matures (i.e., between 85 and 135 lbs. and 4 to 5 years of age).  There is substantial intermixing of the adults of the two stocks during the summer-fall feeding period particularly along the Gulf Stream in the central North Atlantic and to a lesser extent off the U.S. east coast.  However, by late spring the adults of the two stocks return to their respective spawning areas, just as do salmon.  Recent archival and pop-off tagging programs are now available that clarify these large-scale migrations, spawning site fidelity of the two stocks, size of maturity and even daily feeding movements to depths of a half mile for an hour or more.  Recent scientific findings are reported in Nature, Vol. 434, p. 1121, April 28, 2005.

 The Number of Young Has Also Declined     Fewer Juveniles Each Year     

There are only a few relatively decent year classes left -  such as the '94-'95 and '97-'98 year classes, which by Jan. 2004, should have weighed about 350 and 155 lbs.  They are vitally important to the future of this population and must be protected, at least through their first spawning season (around May 2009 for the '97-'98 year class). Throughout the 1960s, vast numbers of juveniles were taken (to be canned as cat food) by purse seiners operating in the bluefin's nursery areas along the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast.  And throughout the 1970s, Japanese longliners decimated the adults on their spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico.  The western North Atlantic bluefin stock has still not begun to recover from this terrible "double whammy."  What makes this story all the more depressing is that the purse seining was encouraged and promoted by NMFS - the federal agency charged with the responsibility for conserving and protecting the nation's marine fishery resources.  This debacle was later repeated by NMFS in the early 1980s with equally disastrous results in the case of Atlantic sharks.