EU to restrict tuna fishing
2007-06-11 14:34
Luxembourg - The European Union agreed on Monday to restrict the fishing of bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean in hope of reviving dwindling stocks.
EU fisheries ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, backed plans to cut member states' fishing quotas for this year by 10% as part of a 15-year package to save tuna, which have become a victim of their success with consumers.
Under the measures, the amount of time fishing boats can be at sea will be limited to six months a year, while the minimum size of fish allowed to be taken was raised from 10kg to 30 to help them reproduce.
The package, which will hit France, Italy and Spain particularly hard as they are the EU's biggest tuna fishing nations, is part of a broader global effort to protect tuna that was agreed in January in Japan.
Environmentalists have warned that tuna face eventual extinction if fishing continued at current rates to feed a worldwide fad for Japanese food such as sushi.
But tuna fishing is an increasingly lucrative industry, particularly for developing economies that export to Japan, which consumes a quarter of the world's tuna.