Posted on 09 June 2010
Rome, Italy – The huge over-capacity of
Europe's tuna fleet was graphically illustrated
today as boats were called back to port
at midnight tonight, after catching in a
week their total allocations for the month
long bluefin tuna season.
High-tech purse seine
fishing boats – whose vast sack-like nets
encircle shoals of bluefin tunas as they
gather to spawn – set off for the high seas
on May 15th, but bad weather prevented them
from catching any fish for the first ten
days. The season was due to close a month
later, on 15th June.
“This early closure
of the EU’s Atlantic bluefin tuna purse
seine fishery does not point to recovery
of the fish – it points to the gross overcapacity
of fleets,” said Dr Sergi Tudela, Head of
Fisheries at WWF Mediterranean.
“That EU purse seine
fleets have in the space of a week caught
their whole annual quota of bluefin tuna
in the Mediterranean is further proof that
these boats are simply not appropriate for
this fishery and that the whole operation
is entirely unsustainable – not to mention
economically unviable.”
France’s purse seiners,
for example, had already caught 1,456 tonnes
by June 8th – some 86 per cent of their
quota for the year – while Spain’s had caught
728 tonnes, over 90 per cent of their quota.
“Purse seiners are so
hyper efficient they leave no chance to
the tunas they target in the peak spawning
period when the fish are at their most fragile,”
said Dr Tudela.
“The fact that these
high-tech vessels are kept idle in port
for more than 50 weeks a year is a total
absurdity and shows the boats’ non-compatibility
with a fish stock that is heavily depleted
and in urgent need of recovery. The only
reason the boat owners can afford to go
out on the water at all is that they were
largely built thanks to extensive EU subsidies
in the first place.”
“WWF is calling for
an immediate phase-out of purse seining
in this fishery – and will use every lever
at its disposal to push members of ICCAT
when they meet in November in Paris to set
the scrapping process in motion at once.”
+ More
US public desire for
climate action little dented by denialist
sound and fury
Posted on 10 June 2010
Gland, Switzerland: Significant new research
from Stanford University is showing that
Americans remain convinced of the reality
of climate change and supportive of specific
government action on it – despite a vigorous
and high profile assault on climate science
earlier this year.
The research, outlined
by Jon A. Krosnick, Professor of communication,
political science and psychology at Stanford
in the International Herald Tribune today,
found around three quarters of interviewees
believed the earth had warmed, believed
human behaviour was substantially responsible
and wanted government to limit greenhouse
gas emissions by businesses.
Professor Krosnick said
the study had found “no decline in Americans’
trust in environmental scientists”. In 2010,
the proportion trusting environmental scientists
“a moderate amount, a lot, or completely”
was 71 per cent, up from 70 per cent in
2009 and 68 per cent in 2008.
“We are very heartened
to find that on climate, you apparently
can’t fool many of the people much of the
time,” said WWF International Director General
James Leape.
More significantly,
the research finds that climate change is
a highly distinctive “issue public”. Among
those who feel strongly about the issue
nearly 90 percent believe it is primarily
a result of human activity and more than
90 percent want the government to act.
Normally, issues which
are strongly motivating exhibit roughly
equivalent proportions of supporters and
opponents.
Professor Krosnick noted
that in both the US and the UK “a huge majority
shares a common vision of climate change”.
“This creates a unique opportunity for elected
representatives to satisfy a lot of voters,”
he concluded.
Mr Leape said it may
take some time to fully appreciate the significance
of the findings. “In Australia, we are finding
for instance that the government is being
punished in the polls after dropping its
emissions trading system, which we were
also told was deeply unpopular,” he said.
“Public responses
to the issue of climate change are clearly
much more complex than much of the analysis
of them. Pronouncements that climate change
is slipping off the international agenda
may well turn out to be premature.”
