Advanced fishing methods deplete bluefin tuna stocks

Barbate: The season for an ancient and spectacular tuna-fishing technique has begun off Spain's southwest coast amid fears it could disappear because fleets of factory ships in international waters are overfishing stocks.

In this method called almadraba in Spanish, fishermen here have stretched maze-like nets from sandy beaches to catch Atlantic bluefin tuna since a time when Phoenician traders sailed to these shores 1,000 years before the birth of Christ.

This laborious harvest, which includes lifting nets heaving with fish onto ships, is timed to coincide with annual migrations by tuna from the Atlantic to lay eggs in warm Mediterranean waters.

The fish, some as large as 10 feet long and weighing more than 650 kilograms, are hoisted on to ships and, while hanging from their tails, are drained of blood by slitting their gills to concentrate flavour in their deep-red flesh. The churning sea water below turns red with blood.

Insatiable demand

Today bluefin tuna are a prized delicacy in top Tokyo restaurants where a thin slice prepared as sushi can fetch 2,000 yen (Dh88). Most of the catch is flash frozen and flown to auction at the Japanese capital's vast Tsukiji market. One large specimen fetched a record 32.49 million yen in January.

The seemingly insatiable demand for bluefins has led to a serious depletion of stocks by fishing ships using the latest technology, including advanced sonar and spotter planes, to follow shoals and catch as many tuna as they can, said Marta Crespo, spokeswoman for a local association of almadraba fishermen.

"In recent times we have had seasons where almost no tuna were caught by us," said Crespo.

She said one of the problems was that factory ships have been allowed to indiscriminately catch and sell tunas as small as 6.4 kilograms.

"A tuna reaches maturity at 30 kilograms, so if people are allowed to fish and consume juveniles it will not be long before stocks are extinguished forever," Crespo said.

In November, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas voted to reduce the bluefin fishing quota in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean from 13,500 to 12,900 tonnes annually — about a 4 per cent cut. It also agreed on measures to try and improve enforcement of bluefin quotas.