Hudson Canyon is a doglegged, miles-long gash that was
carved out of the continental shelf during the last ice age, by a Hudson River
that first met the ocean a very long way from where it does so today. Located
about 100 miles southeast of New York City, it is the largest submarine canyon
on the East Coast, and one of the largest in the world.
Hudson Canyon is also where,
three decades ago, I encountered my first bigeye tuna, a 166-pound fish that
came out of nowhere to grab a trolled lure, then rocketed back to the deep,
though tethered to the surface by a thin nylon line.
I wasn’t the angler who
caught that first bigeye; I was running the boat, and just left the controls at
the last minute to sink a flying gaff in the tuna’s side. Still, when it lay on
the deck, sides reflecting the sun, I celebrated its capture as much, if not
more, than the angler himself.
That’s because bigeye are
different.
Unlike bluefin or yellowfin
tuna, they don’t come close to shore, nor do fishermen find hordes of them
chasing bait on the surface. Instead, bigeye are a fish of deep waters, that
seek out their prey, usually squid, along canyon walls, the face of the
continental slope, and in mid-ocean gyres of clear, warm blue water that break
off from the Gulf Stream and wander across the face of the sea.
On occasion they school, but
they are seldom common. More often, bigeyes come one at a time, or in small
packs that will pop up behind a boat to hit four, five or six lines at the same
time, and turn an orderly cockpit into a scene of hopefully-controlled chaos.
Back at the dock, captains brag about how they went “four for five”‘ when the
tuna attacked. And when they attack, those on the boat need to do everything
right, because if they miss that one chance, they might not get another for the
rest of that trip. Or on the next trip. Or the one after that…
So it’s not hard to
understand why bigeye tuna are a prized offshore catch.
They’re prized in the commercial fishery, too. Although bigeye,
reaching a maximum size of about 400 pounds, don’t grow as large as
bluefin tuna and are not anywhere near as well known as the charismatic
“giants,” they support a more valuable commercial fishery, in which
large numbers of small bigeye are caught in purse seines for the canned tuna
market, while a lesser number of larger fish are caught on longlines and other
hook-and-line gear, for eventual sale to sushi shops, other restaurants and the
retail trade.
And that’s where the bigeye has gotten into trouble, for in the words of Paulus Tak, an officer of the Pew Charitable
Trusts who works on tuna management issues, “Bottom line, there are simply too
many boats in the water chasing too few fish.”
Because bigeye are a highly migratory species, which cross
through many nations’ waters in the course of their migrations, they are
managed by the International Commission
for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). In 2015, ICCAT established a 65,000 metric ton (mt) annual catch limit,
but it only applied to the seven nations that harvested the largest amount of
bigeye tuna; other nations were not subject to any landings restrictions at
all.
As a result, total Atlantic bigeye landings soared well beyond
the catch limit established in 2015, exceeding 80,000 mt in 2017. Such landings are too high to
allow the bigeye stock to rebuild (even the 65,000 mt limit established by
ICCAT, if not exceeded, had only a 49% chance of restoring the population by 2028); instead,
scientists who assessed the stock again in 2018 predicted that, unless bigeye
landings were substantially reduced, the stock will collapse within the next 20 years.
Abundance has already fallen to just 20% of historical levels.
At its November 2018 meeting,
ICCAT debated the bigeye management issue, but discussions went nowhere, as
delegates elevated parochial interests above the long-term health of the bigeye
stock.
Some scientists estimated that, if annual landings were cut to no more than 50,000 mt, there was a 70 percent chance
that the bigeye population could be rebuilt within ten years. While the United States supported a 10-year rebuilding timeline,
there was little political support for such a sharp reduction in harvest.
A number of nations did reach agreement on a 15-year rebuilding plan that would have reduced annual
landings to 62,500 mt, required many smaller harvesters to abide by such limit,
and restricted the use of fish attracting devices (FADs) that are deployed by
purse seiners to aggregate large numbers of immature bigeye and make them far
easier to harvest. Unfortunately, such measure ultimately failed to garner
enough support, and could not be adopted.
European purse seiners, who are responsible for about one-third
of all Atlantic bigeye landings, blamed the failure on longlinersfrom Asia, which account for more than half of the bigeye harvest. A
spokesman for the Spanish purse seiners alleged that the longliners “tried
to avoid any measure that could affect their fleet.”
At the same time, fishing interests from some of the smaller harvesters
that are currently exempt from catch limits, including Brazil, Senegal,
Guatemala and Cape Verde, blocked efforts to include them among the regulated
nations.
The various factions refused to engage in any meaningful effort
to reach a compromise that would adequately protect and rebuild the bigeye. As Grantly Galland, a representative of the Pew Charitable
Trusts who was present at the meeting, observed, “Everyone is to blame for this
one. Each individual member is more concerned with its own priorities than
finding consensus on a real recovery plan.”
In the face of such discord, the current 65,000 mt catch limit,
applicable to just seven nations, was extended for another year, and some limitations on FADs were
adopted.
Such measures will are not enough to halt the bigeye’s decline,
and were condemned by John Henderschedt, Director of NOAA’s Fisheries’ Office
of International Affairs and Seafood Inspection, who is one of the United
States’ three ICCAT commissioners. Henderschedt stated, in part, that
“Earlier this year, a stock
assessment confirmed that Atlantic bigeye tuna is overfished and subject to
overfishing. The United States advocated strongly for the adoption of measures
that would end overfishing immediately, rebuild the stock within 10 years,
establish greater accountability to catch limits, and take appropriate account
of the relative impact of various fisheries by reducing the catch of small
bigeye tuna in purse seine fisheries. The United States is disappointed that
ICCAT failed to adopt measures that will ensure the long-term sustainability of
the bigeye tuna stock.”
There is no guarantee that such badly needed measures will be
adopted next year, either, for as the head of South Africa’s ICCAT delegation noted, “The industry
wants to make money and in the quickest way it can.”
But that’s just the kind of
short-term thinking that ICCAT is supposed to avoid.
The Preamble to ICCAT’s Basic
Texts, which established the Commission, states that “The
Governments whose duly authorized representatives have subscribed hereto,
considering their mutual interests in the populations of tuna and tuna-like
fishes found in the Atlantic Ocean, and desiring to co-operate in maintaining
the populations of these fishes at levels which will permit the maximum
sustainable catch…resolve to conclude a Convention for the conservation of the
resources of tuna and tuna-like fishes of the Atlantic Ocean…”
By failing to reach an
agreement on management measures that will adequately conserve the bigeye, and
restore its abundance to sustainable levels, ICCAT has betrayed its stated
purpose, and the international agreement that created the organization.
And, far worse, it has
betrayed the bigeye as well.
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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog
of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/
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