Consensus reached to fight tuna overfishing: Japan

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

TOKYO (AFP) — Tuna eating and catching nations agreed Thursday to review rules to fight chronic overfishing, paving the way for stricter catch quotas later this year, Japanese officials said.

Officials, scientists and fisheries industry people from 13 nations held two days of talks in Tokyo amid concern that the growing popularity for Japanese food around the world is endangering tuna populations.

"There was opposition to the idea that the rules might be tightened, particularly from fisheries operators in the Mediterranean, who said the regulations are pretty tight as they are," said a Japanese official who attended the closed-door talks.

"But in the end, everyone knew that to conserve the fish we can't continue fishing like we're doing now," he said....