Despite Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) being endangered,

the Australian Government continues its weak policy of appeasing the Japanese – the main poachers and customers of Bluefin Tuna.

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<<The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora is abbreviated ‘CITES’.

The Australian federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. Government is a signatory to CITES and since and CITES international trade regulations have been enforceable under Australian law since 27 October 1976. Every signatory to CITES is required to designate a management authority. In Australia this is effectively the Threatened Species Scientific Committee.

On 7 September 2005, Australia’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee concluded that the Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT)… “continues to be overfished despite the international management arrangements which have been formally in place since 1994.”

“The parental biomass is currently in the order of 3 to 14% of that in 1960 (its unfished size). In addition, BRS has classified SBT as being ‘overfished’ every year since the first BRS fishery status reports were first produced in 1992.

“Stock assessment models have shown a significant historic decline in the biomass of SBT. The mature population of SBT has declined significantly over its last three generations (since the 1980s) and is currently at a very low level.

Therefore, the species is eligible for listing as endangered under Criterion 1.”

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee recommended this to the Australian Government.

Australia’s then Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator the Hon Ian Campbell decided against listing the species under the EPBC Act…“as it may weaken Australia’s ability to influence both the management of the global fishing effort and the global conservation of the species.”>>

[Read More:  ^http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/species/southern-bluefin-tuna.html]

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CITES COP15 draft resolution March 2010 on Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus thynnus)

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* Fishing capacity is at least double that needed to catch the current legal quota and that recent estimated catches have been four times greater than the maximum catch recommended by scientists to prevent the collapse of the population.

* A 78.4% cut would be needed in the fishing effort by the fleet targeting East Atlantic and Mediterranean Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

* East Atlantic and Mediterranean stock status, fell by 80% in the southern Iberian
Peninsula between 2000 and 2006

* The loss of groups of older fish in the shoals present in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean fishery and the drastic fall in the reproductive biomass, which is currently only 36% of the level that existed at the beginning of the 1970s, are clear symptoms that this population is in imminent danger of collapse.

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CITES has recommended to:

a)  Establish a science-based recovery plan for the East Atlantic and Mediterranean stock
… and to ban industrial fishing – particularly purse seining- during the entire spawning season (May, June and July)

b)  Establish immediately an interim suspension of the East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery

c)  Permit resumption of fishing activities only according to the strict science-based ICCAT population-recovery plan

d)  Set up protection zones for spawning grounds in the Mediterranean, including the waters within the Balearic Sea, Central Mediterranean, and Levant Sea, during the spawning season.

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The Japanese, consumers of 80% of the world’s Bluefin, have rejected the ban and the recommendations, while Australia has not accepted the ban.  Australia’s federal minister for the environment etc, Peter Garrett, has refused to join the United States and the European Union in seeking a trade ban.>>

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March 2010:  Peter Garrett rejects bluefin trade ban

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<<Australia has refused to join the United States and the European Union in seeking a trade ban on imperilled northern bluefin tuna, sparking an outcry from conservation groups.

The fish’s plight is seen as a key example of poor global fisheries management, and its fate a potential precedent for Australian tuna fisheries.

The decision by the Environment Protection Minister, Peter Garrett, to go for trade controls instead of the ban has angered the groups, but Australian tuna fishers said it was a sensible outcome.

Listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the northern, or Atlantic, bluefin has lost 72 per cent to 82 per cent of its original stock under pressure from illegal or unregulated fishing for the sashimi trade.

”What’s driving it over the edge is that about 90 per cent of the catch is unregulated export to Japan,” said Glenn Sant, the global marine program manager for TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade network.

Mr Sant said a study he took part in for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation showed that northern bluefin met the criteria for an appendix one listing under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

The appendix one listing, supported by the Obama administration and the EU, would prohibit international trade. It is strongly opposed by Japan and would need a two-thirds majority to be approved.

At the CITES meeting starting today in Qatar, Australia will argue for a lesser appendix two listing that provides instead for more tightly managed trade of the fish.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society said the fears of the domestic bluefin industry should not be allowed to dominate government decision-making.>>

[Source:  ‘Garrett rejects bluefin trade ban’, 20100313, by Andrew Darby, Fairfax Media, Hobart, ^http://www.smh.com.au/environment/garrett-rejects-bluefin-trade-ban-20100312-q465.html]

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CITES failed Bluefin Tuna in 2010

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<<The triennial meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is still underway in Doha, Qatar, this week, but so far news coming out of the conference is a mixed bag. Some trees have been protected, tigers gained a few friends, and a rare salamander got some attention, but all hopes to save the critically endangered bluefin tuna were sunk in a secret ballot that put commerce ahead of science and conservation.

Populations of Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) have dropped 97 % since 1960, but the tasty fish remains in high demand in Japan, where sushi bars are willing to pay up to $100,000 or more per fish.

A possible CITES ban on bluefin tuna—supported by the U.S. and 27 European Union nations)—has been in the works for months. Japan, meanwhile, had already announced that it would not comply with such a ban if it were enacted.  Unfortunately, the ban failed, and fishing will continue. CITES’s own press release, titled “Governments not ready for trade ban on bluefin tuna,” is surprisingly candid about how this happened:

Japan, Canada and several members States of the Arab league opposed the proposal arguing that regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) as ICCAT [the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas] were best placed to tackle the decline of bluefin tuna stocks.

They added that an Appendix I listing [which would ban trade in the species] would not stop the fishing of the species. After a passionate but relatively short debate, the representative of Libya requested to close the deliberations and go for a vote. Iceland called for a secret ballot. The amendment introduced by the European Union and Monaco’s proposal were defeated (20 votes in favor, 68 against, 30 abstentions) in the middle of much confusion about the voting procedures and mixed feelings of satisfaction and frustration from participants.”

Obviously, pro-tuna groups were not happy about this series of events. “It is scandalous that governments did not even get the chance to engage in meaningful debate about the international trade ban proposal for Atlantic bluefin tuna,” said Sergi Tudela, head of fisheries for the WWF Mediterranean Programme Office, in a prepared statement.

Oceana, a conservation group devoted to the health of the oceans, called this “a clear win by short-term economic interest over the long-term health of the ocean and the rebuilding of Atlantic bluefin tuna populations.” And Greenpeace International oceans campaigner Oliver Knowles stated, “The abject failure of governments here at CITES to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna spells disaster for its future and sets the species on a pathway to extinction.”

We’ll be covering more CITES decisions—both good and bad—all week.>>

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[Source:  ‘Sushi-cide: Secret ballot kills hopes for bluefin tuna protections’, by John R. Platt, 20100323, ^http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2010/03/23/sushi-cide-secret-ballot-kills-hopes-for-bluefin-tuna-protections/]

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Call to Boycott Japanese Cuisine

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Japanese cuisine includes sashimi, which typically is Bluefin Tuna. Bluefin is the raw fish used in Japanese ‘maguro’, and ‘o-toro’ dishes and in many sushi combinations.

The Australian Government may pasty to the Japanese, but that doesn’t stop ethically driven citizens boycotting Japanese restaurants and sushi shops, which sell raw fish which is typically the critically endangered Bluefin Tuna.

It’s time to send a blunt message to the Japanese that their fettish for Bluefin is backward!  Some are labelling the plight of  ‘BLUEFIN SUSHICIDE‘.

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Japanese eating the Endangered into Extinction

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[This article was first published by Tigerquoll on CanDoBetter.net on 20100416 under the same title].

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Japanese contempt for whales, dolphins and sharks has highlihghted to the world the backward culture of this part of traditional Japanese society. Japanese whalers and fishing corporations have made Japan the pariah of the world’s oceans.

The Japanese lie of scientific whaling has become a cliched euphemism. Now the science has been officially confirmed as a fraud, as if we didn’t already know.

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The following article has just been published in the online Science Daily:

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‘DNA analysis suggests whale meat from sushi restaurants in L.A. and Seoul originated from Japan’

[Source: ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010]

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“An international team of Oregon State University scientists, documentary filmmakers and environmental  advocates has uncovered an apparent illegal trade in whalemeat, linking whales killed in Japan’s controversial scientific whaling program to sushi restaurants in Seoul, South Korea, and Los Angeles, Calif.

Genetic analysis of sashimi served at a prominent Los Angeles sushi restaurant in October of 2009 has confirmed that the strips of raw meat purchased by filmmakers of the Oscar-winning documentary, “The Cove,” came from a sei whale — most likely from Japanese “scientific whaling.”

Do you want dolphin with that? ‘Scientists have identified four species of whales and one species of dolphin from a plate of sashimi, like this one sold in a restaurant in Seoul. (Credit: Photo courtesy of Louie Psihoyos, Oceanic Preservation Society)’

“The sequences were identical to sei whale products that had previously been purchased in Japan in 2007 and 2008, which means they not only came from the same area of the ocean — but possibly from the same distinct population,” said Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, who conducted the analysis.
“And since the international moratorium on commercial hunting (1986), there has been no other known source of sei whales available commercially other than in Japan,” Baker added. “This underscores the very real problem of the illegal international trade of whalemeat products.”

Results of the study were published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.  “The Cove” director Louie Psihoyos and assistant director Charles Hambleton gained the attention of international news media recently by covertly filming the serving of whale products at The Hump restaurant.

Following initial identification of the samples taken from the restaurant, the products were turned over to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s law enforcement division and in March, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against the restaurant, which since has closed.  Baker said the samples taken from The Hump cannot conclusively be linked to an individual whale because genetic identity records of animals killed through Japan’s scientific whaling are not released by the Japanese government. In their paper in Biology Letters, Baker and 10 co-authors — including “The Cove” filmmakers — call for Japan to share its DNA register of whales taken from that country’s scientific whaling program and “bycatch” whaling.

“Our ability to use genetics as a tool to monitor whale populations around the world has advanced significantly over the past few years,” Baker said, “but unless we have access to all of the data — including those whales killed under Japan’s scientific whaling — we cannot provide resource managers with the best possible science.
“This is not just about better control of whaling itself,” Baker added, “but getting a better handle on the international trade of whale products.”

In their paper published in Biology Letters, lead author Baker and colleagues from the Korean Federation of Environmental Movements also report on 13 whale products purchased at a sushi restaurant in Seoul, South Korea, during two 2009 visits. The sushi was part of a mixed plate of “whale sashimi,” and genetic testing by Baker and OSU’s Debbie Steel determined that four of the products were from an Antarctic minke whale, four were from a sei whale, three were from a North Pacific minke whale, one was from a fin whale, and one was from a Risso’s dolphin.

Further testing by collaborators from Seoul National University confirmed the individual identity of the whale products by DNA “profiling.”  The DNA profile of the fin whale meat from the Seoul restaurant genetically matched products purchased by Baker’s colleague, Naoko Funahashi, in Japanese markets in 2007 — strongly suggesting it came from the same whale.
“Since the international moratorium, it has been assumed that there is no international trade in whale products,” Baker said. “But when products from the same whale are sold in Japan in 2007 and in Korea in 2009, it suggests that international trade, though illegal, is still an issue. Likewise, the Antarctic minke whale is not found in Korean waters, but it is hunted by Japan’s controversial scientific whaling program in the Antarctic.

“How did it show up in a restaurant in Seoul?”

Baker has developed an international reputation for his research in determining the origin of whalemeat products sold in markets around the world. His research on identification of dolphin meat contaminated with high levels of mercury was featured in “The Cove,” where he worked with Psihoyos and Hambleton. In their paper, the authors describe the long legacy of falsifying whale catch records, beginning with the Soviet Union, which failed to account for more than 100,000 whales it killed in the 20th century. This illegal, unreported or unregulated whaling “continues today under the cover of incidental fisheries bycatch and scientific whaling.”

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Japanese love slaughtering dolphins too!

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Each year at a cove near Taiji on the south east cost of central Japan, thousands of bottlenose dolphins and pilot whales are slaughtered by the Japanese. The cull is endorsed by the Japanese goivernment to commence on 1st September every year.

Bottlenose Dolphin, confimed as one of the most intelligent animals on the planet Typically, over six months the town’s fishermen will catch over 2,000 of Japan’s annual quota of 20,000
dolphins.   Dolphin slaughter turns sea red as Japan hunting season returns “In a typical hunt the fishermen pursue pods of dolphins across open seas, banging metal poles together beneath the water to confuse their hypersensitive sonar. The exhausted animals are driven into a large cove sealed off by nets to stop them escaping and dragged backwards into secluded inlets the following morning to be butchered with knives and spears. They are then loaded on to boats and taken to the quayside to be cut up in a warehouse, the fishermen’s work hidden from the outside by heavy shutters.

‘Tensions have been rising and the culls conducted in near-secrecy since 2003, when two members of the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd released several dolphins that were being kept in an enclosure ready to be slaughtered.

During our visit we were followed at almost every turn, ordered not to take photographs and questioned by the police, who seem to view every foreign visitor as a potential hunt saboteur. None of the residents who agreed to talk would reveal their names, and requests for comments from the town office were ignored.  Criticism of the dolphin hunts intensified this summer with the release of the award-winning US documentary The Cove, whose makers used remote-controlled helicopters and hidden underwater cameras to record the hunters at work. The film was released in the UK last October.

The film, with its graphic footage of the dolphin slaughter, sparked outrage after its release in the US and Australia. Last month councillors in the Australian coastal town of Broome suspended its 28-year sister-city relationship with Taiji after receiving thousands of emails protesting at the culls.

Japanese annual dolphin slaughter at The Cove, Taiji, Japan

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Taiji is regarded as the spiritual home of Japan’s whaling industry. The first hunts took place in the early 1600s, according to the town’s whaling museum, but the industry went into decline after the introduction of a global ban on commercial whaling in 1986.  The town, a six-hour train ride from Tokyo, is dotted with restaurants serving whale and dolphin sashimi and cetacean iconography appears on everything from the pavements and bridge balustrades to road tunnels and a wind turbine.”

[Source: ‘Dolphin slaughter turns sea red as Japan hunting season returns’, by Justin McCurry, The Guardian, 14-Sep-09, ^http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/14/dolphin-slaughter-hunting-japan-taiji].

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Call to boycott Japanese restaurants

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This slaughter of whales, dolphins and endangered fish such as Bluefin and sharks confirms the barbaric backwardness of traditional cultures in east Asia. Japan clearly is making a point to highlight its backwardness.

Around the world, including in Australia, Japanese restaurants continue to serve up Bluefin Tuna and Shark Fin soup and probably ‘scientific’ whale meat and dolphin. It is a disgrace!
Bluefin is critically endangered and both the scalloped hammerhead shark and whitetip shark “have seen their numbers drop dramatically since the 1980s, due to rising demand for shark fin soup especially among China’s nouveau rich and for fish and chips in Europe. Surging demand for shark fin soup among Asia’s booming middle classes is driving many species of these big fish to the brink of extinction.”

[Source: ‘Sharks threatened by Asian consumers, says Group’ Michael Casey, AP, 16 March 2010, ^http://www.physorg.com/news187936927.html]

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In this March 8, 2010 photo, a woman walks past shark fins displayed in a glass case at a dried seafood shop in Hong Kong.

Shark Fins for sale in Hoing Kong

^http://www.physorg.com/news187936927.html

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The following example Japanese restaurants in Australia sell Bluefin and shark fin. It is time Australians boycotted such trades perpetuating wildlife extinctions.

* SYDNEY: Blue Fin Seafood Restaurant, Brighton-Le-Sands Amateur Fishermans Club, Bestic St, Brighton-Le-Sands NSW 2216
* MELBOURNE: Blue Fin, 342 Brunswick St, Fitzroy VIC 3065
* BRISBANE: Oishii Sushi Bar Shop2/70 Pinelands Rd Sunnybank Hills, Brisbane

 

Don’t buy Japanese – it only perpetuate’s Japan’s arrogance

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Back in 2000, Australia and New Zealand sought an international ruling at the International Court of Justice under United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) against Japan’s fishing of Southern Bluefin Tuna in the Southern Ocean.

Ridiculously, the court found that it had no jurisdiction to make binding rulings on Japan’s access to high seas fisheries, and that Japan can make “its own unilateral decisions as to what to fish, and where.”

So Japan continued to unilaterally embarke on a three year “Experimental Fishing Program” (EFP), that…is we want the tuna and no-one is getting in our way!
Last month at CITES COP15 meeting, Monaco had called for a global ban on bluefin tuna fishing by CITES, arguing despite stocks having fallen by about 85%, the organisation responsible for managing the bluefin fishery – the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) – had not implemented measures strict enough to ensure the species’ survival. Australia voted against the ban, supporting Japan. ICCAT is due to meet on the bluefin issue on 14 June 2010 in Madrid Spain.

Meanwhile, in the Southern Ocean, the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna is a voluntary fishery management group comprised of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the Philippines as a formal cooperating non-member. Much of the Southern Bluefin Tuna catch ends up in Japan where it is prized as sushi and sushimi.
Australia’s tuna fishing industry is based in Port Lincoln in South Australia. Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Taiwanese Bluefin tuna fleets use long line fishing which results in the incidental deaths of thousands of seabirds, particularly petrels and albatross.

For over 20 years Japan has plundered the Southern Bluefin Tuna Fishery under its unilaterally imposed ‘Experimental Fishing Program (EFP)’, similar in deception as ‘Japanese scientific whaling’. According to Humane Society International, the Scientific Committee to the Commission has estimated the SBT population is at a mere 3-8% of its pre-exploitation biomass.

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It is time to boycott Japanese sushi, sushimi, seafood restaurants and indeed all Japanese products, until Japan’s arrogant poaching of protected and endangered marine life is stopped!

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Japanese carving up Minke Whale

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