I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but to all those who have not heard, there is a push being led by certain enviro groups to get bluefin tuna listed on Appendix I of CITES. A listing on CITES will be the end of ALL fishing for bluefin in this country- both rec and commercial.
For those of you who do not know, CITES is an international convention made up of 175 nations that deals with trade in "endangered" species. While any listing on CITES would stop fishing for bluefin in this country, the enviro groups are pushing for an Appendix I listing, which is far and away the worst listing you can have. For a species to be listed on Appendix I, it has to be "threatened by extinction".
While the primary goal of a CITES listing is to stop all international trade of that species, in a country like ours, it will do much more. If bluefin are listed, as just mentioned, they will be deemed to be "threatened by extinction", and in this country, that means no more fishing for that species. Some will try to fool themselves into thinking that this will not stop all fishing but they will do so at their own peril. This listing, if allowed to happen, will end the US fishery completely. If you think you will be allowed to go out and cause any kind of mortality on a species that is "going extinct", think about when was the last time you were allowed to catch and release a right whale, or a tiger. That sounds silly, but thats the category bluefin will be relegated to if this happens.
Worst of all, a CITES listing will shut us down, but will do little to stop the nations doing the overfishing. While in our country a CITES listing means no more fishing, you can bet your ass that is not the case in just about any other ICCAT nation. They will continue to catch bluefin and will do so without many of the regulations in place today. At the same time, Japan and other nations already fishing in the Central Atlantic will likely increase their catches to make up for any loss landings from nations like ours. In the end, as they always do, these nations will find a way around this.
But here in the US, we are screwed. If this goes through, we will all be finding a new job or hobby next summer. And since a listing is essentially permanent, you will have to find one to keep you busy the rest of your lives, because there is no going back once this listing happens.
Now, while we all know that the other side has been overfishing, I doubt there is a single person around here that thinks these fish are "threatened by extinction". Its a joke. We have so many fish around its amazing. But if this happens, next summer we wont be able to touch them. I dont know about you guys, but we have seen more tuna this summer than we have seen in a decade or more. Its so obvious that with bait we get tuna. To hear about this listing now is almost too much to handle.
Our government has a vote in any CITES actions, and so it is in the process of deciding what it wants to do. Just this week, the government put out a notice in the Federal Register asking for comments on this. I do not have the link in front of me, but tomorrow I will put out all the information needed to comment on this. There are a bunch of different people we need to bombard with letters if we want to help in saving this fishery. This is serious, guys, we all have to speak up. If we dont, there is a good chance we wont be fishing next summer (or ever again). We will have all these tuna off our coast and will be banned from going near them. I wish I was joking.
The other thing to do, if you have not already, is to join the American Bluefin Tuna Association. I am member and I would urge you all to join so that we have a united front on this BS.
Here is the link for that:
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Again, this is not a drill, we are going to be fighting for our lives between now and March. We need to all get involved- there has not been an issue since most of us have been fishing that has been more dire.
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