ban on trade in atlantic bluefin

Japan faces threat to sushi from US vote

* Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
* From: The Australian
* March 05, 2010 12:00AM

JAPANESE hopes of keeping open a prized fishery suffered a severe blow yesterday when the US announced it would vote for a total ban on international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Imports from the East Atlantic and Mediterranean, which could be completely shut down by the threatened ban, would reduce Japan's sources of bluefin tuna by about 20 per cent.

US support not only raises the likelihood of the ban vote succeeding next week but means Japan will come under heavy pressure from its principal ally if, as threatened, it defies the embargo.

The world's most voracious seafood consumers, the Japanese eat bluefin tuna mainly as premium sushi and sashimi and take about 80 per cent of the world supply.

Having had their southern bluefin quota slashed by half in 2007, a punishment for 20 years of cheating on catch allocations, they fear outright bans now could spread to other depleted fisheries.

Like the southern fishery, supervised by the Canberra-based Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna, the East and West Atlantic fisheries are over-fished to the point of collapse.

Japan, which plans to import about 11,000 tonnes of the 13,500 tonnes total catch limit for East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin this year, is fighting to prevent a two-thirds vote for the ban by members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife Fauna and Flora. The fact that the action is being taken under CITES, a wildlife conservation treaty, rather than a commercial fisheries management commission, sharpens Japan's concerns.

"If the ban is allowed in the Atlantic Ocean, tuna in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean may be next," Japan Fisheries Agency councillor Masanori Miyahara told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

"Other fish species, such as Pacific cod, also may be designated (for protection) in a domino-like progression."

The CITES countries will meet in Qatar from March 13, with the Atlantic bluefin ban at the top of their agenda.

Japan could still exempt itself from the Atlantic embargo by registering an objection, as a senior ministerial official warned the European Union in February.

This provoked a strong response from CITES secretary-general Willem Wijnstekers.

Tokyo wholesale prices are already rising in anticipation of the loss of Atlantic supply.

At the Tsukiji market they went up 60 per cent from November to Y=6500kg ($81.75) at the end of last month. However, a manager for a Tsukiji wholesaler told The Australian a 20,000-tonne stockpile and hard economic times -- which depress bluefin consumption -- meant the ban "is not an extremely urgent matter for the next 12 to 18 months".

"But in the future we are gradually facing big effects."