Death by sashimi (1): the survival of the Southern Bluefin Tuna.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Tanter, Richard
• Date: 22 December 1999

In the late 1980s, Greenpeace International campaigned against the Japanese government's unilateral 'scientific whaling research program' with a famous joke in a newspaper advertisement. Above a photograph of a large Japanese whaling ship on a lovely blue ocean, the text read:

Question: How do you define a Japanese fishing researcher?

Answer: Hungry!

For many people outside Japan, the joke expressed the Japanese government's deceptive intentions in its unilateral whaling research program. What kind of 'research' was it, people wondered, where thousands of the animals killed for science ended up on the tables of Japanese restaurants? One result of that research program was serious damage to the reputation of Japanese marine research for impartiality and objectivity.

That aroma of suspicion is drifting back today, this time not just about whales, but about that expensive Japanese delicacy, southern bluefin tuna. Is it possible that Japanese greed for sashimi will mean a death sentence for an entire species?

In August 1999, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea ordered Japan to suspend its unilateral experimental fishing program for southern bluefin tuna, and to re-enter negotiations with Australia and New Zealand. The three countries, which are the members of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna, have been locked in a three-year disagreement concerning the size of southern bluefin tuna stocks. Unable to secure agreement to its proposed joint research program from Australia and New Zealand, Japan had launched a unilateral 'experimental fishing program' in 1998, with Japanese fishing boats taking 1440 t. of southern bluefin for scientific purposes, on top of the 5588 t. which is Japan's annual quota under the Commission. Unfortunately for Japan's international scientific image, not only has the research been criticized as scientifically inadequate, but once again the scientific research materials have been sold in Tokyo's world-famous Tsukuji fish market.

Southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) are wonderful looking fish that flash through the cold waters of the Southern Ocean above Antarctica, travelling up to the extreme southern coast of Australia, Africa and South America. Mature bluefin can be over two metres in length, and weigh up to 200 kg. They are long lived, maturing at about eight to twelve years, and often living to more than forty. Highly migratory, they breed from September to March in the warm waters between Java and northwestern Australia, returning to feed in the cold waters south of Australia and in the southern Indian Ocean--which make up the southern bluefin fishery--in July and August. Unfortunately for their chances of survival, southern bluefin tuna are delicious, and fetch a high price as sashimi in Japan. More than ninety per cent of the 15,000 t. caught each year by Japanese, Australian, New Zealand, Taiwanese, South Korean and Indonesian fishing fleets, and by the large number of vessels operating under 'flags of convenience', is imported into Japan.

The dispute between the three countries has both legal and scientific aspects, but the most important is the difference of scientific opinion about the state of the stocks. Both sides are agreed that the massive unrestrained catch of southern bluefin tuna by Australia and Japan between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s devastated stocks to a critical level. The Japanese catch started from zero in 1952, raced to 60,000 t. in 1959, and peaked at just under 80,000 t. in 1961. In the following years global catch levels by weight fell quickly, although the number of fish caught by the Australian fishing fleet increased rapidly, until the early 1980s.

Informal and voluntary Australian-Japanese co-operation to manage the collapsing southern bluefin stock began in the early 1980s. In 1993, Australia, New Zealand and Japan established the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna, under which the total allowable catch remains 11,750 t., and set agreed quotas for the three countries. Under the voluntary agreements of the 1980s and the commission regime, Japan and Australia accepted very substantial cuts in their respective catch levels, with the Japanese allocation declining by more than half between 1985 and 1990.

The 1993 'total allowable catch' was set at a level the Commission decided was adequate to allow the...