Blue Ocean, Earthjustice Press To End Bluefin Fishing In Gulf Of Mexico - ENN

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NEW ORLEANS — Bluefin tuna fishing should be shut down in the Gulf of Mexico to keep one of the world's largest and most valuable fish from dying out, environmentalists say. Earthjustice and the Blue Ocean Institute sued the federal government this week, after the government's rejection of a petition by Earthjustice to close 125,000 square miles of the Gulf when bluefin are spawning.

Coincidentally, a study in the current issue of Nature warns that fish populations worldwide are on the brink of collapse. Researchers from Dalhousie University in Canada say long-term trends based on fish landings indicate decades of overfishing have driven most commercial species to unprecedented low numbers. If the trend is not reversed, the researchers claim, most fish stocks will crash by 2048. The environmental groups' lawsuit was filed in Washington, D.C.

Federal fisheries managers say bluefin already are highly protected in domestic waters, and the species' decline is an international problem, since European nations catch more than 10 times as much bluefin tuna as are caught by North American nations. Bluefin, which can reach 10 feet long and up to 1,500 pounds, travel thousands of miles every year to reach the spring spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico. Direct fishing for bluefin was banned in U.S. waters in 1999, said Sam Rauch, deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Yet many of the fish end up getting caught and sold regardless, hooked by longline fishing vessels targeting mahi-mahi, albacore and yellowfin tuna. That "incidental catch" is not illegal. Between 1995 and 2004, the most recent data available, more than 22 million pounds of bluefin tuna worth $150 million were landed in U.S. ports in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

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