Tag Archives: meeting in Tenerife
Bluefin Tuna Get It On off North Carolina
In November 1981, a fleet of briefcase-toting lobbyists, scientists, and political negotiators gathered in sunny Tenerife, Spain, to decide the fate of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Representing more than a dozen countries, including Canada, the United States, Spain, and Italy, the besuited men knew crisis loomed. Since the early 1970s, rising global demand for bluefin flesh had spurred fishing fleets—hailing from ports on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean—to kill untold thousands of the wide-ranging predator every year. Under this heavy fishing pressure, primarily driven by the Japanese appetite for sushi-grade tuna, the species careened toward collapse. During the meeting in Tenerife, the American delegation to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas proposed a disarmingly simple solution: they would draw a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and split the bluefin into two separate stocks. >>click to read<< 08:19
