Action Briefing Aug 2005 - Sept 2005
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Death by a thousand hooks: How long-lining is destroying biodiversity at sea

Fancy tuna and mayonnaise sarnies? Salade Nicoise? How about tuna steaks in red wine, or Sashimi? What if you knew that a commonly used method of catching tuna also kills 3.3 million sharks, one million marlin, 59,000 sea turtles, up to 76,000 albatrosses and almost 20,000 dolphins each year?

The method is called long-line fishing. It uses single lines up to 100km long with as many as 6,000 baited hooks to catch tuna and swordfish, but many other species of marine life, some critically endangered, are also caught on the hooks.

At greatest risk are large seabirds and turtles. As the baited lines are set behind the fishing vessels, scavenging birds seize the bait, get hooked, and are then pulled underwater and drown as the line sinks. In the late 1990's, the Chilean sea bass industry was estimated to have killed approximately 145,000 seabirds in just one year. Birdlife International says that 18 seabird species, including the magnificent wandering albatross, are in danger of extinction, mainly because of long-lining.

Simple mitigation measures employed by the more regulated fisheries (but not by the large fleet of pirate vessels) can reduce seabird by-catch. Unfortunately, these measures do not protect sea turtles. The most critically endangered turtle species is also the world's largest, the leatherback turtle, which can weigh as much as a horse and swim a hundred kilometres in a day (it's also a rare example of a warm-blooded reptile). Pacific leatherback and loggerhead turtles have a 65 per cent chance of getting caught on long-lines every year, and a one-in-five chance of dying from the experience. Without action now, both species could be gone from the oceans within a few years.

Damage
There's also the damage to shark, threatened billfish (such as marlin), dolphin and porpoise populations to consider. Incidentally, if your canned tuna says 'dolphin friendly', all this usually means is that very few dolphins have been killed by the fishing nets. Many other good quality fish such as the common dolphinfish or mahi mahi are frequently thrown overboard as unwanted by-catch.

Even the tuna themselves are in trouble. The dramatic increase in world-wide tuna consumption (consumer spending in the UK on fresh tuna alone rose fifteen-fold from £786,000 in 1993 to £12,439,000 in 2001) has meant that some tuna stocks are close to collapse. Recent scientific reports estimate that the populations of large predatory fish such as tuna have declined by as much as 90 per cent in the past 50 years. Most threatened are those tuna valued as delicacies by the Japanese, bluefin tuna in particular.

The impact of long-lining was highlighted at the recent UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, where a call for a moratorium was backed by more than 800 scientists from 83 countries and 230 environmental organizations. There has yet to be a vote on the moratorium proposal but, with luck, it should result in some fishing time and area restrictions.

What is really needed, however, is a complete ban on long-lining, and viable alternatives do exist: the pole-and-line method of tuna fishing reduces by-catch to a minimum, so sticking to pole-and-line caught tuna from sustainable stocks (such as Eastern Pacific skipjack tuna and Western and Central Pacific yellowfin, which the Marine Conservation Society believes are currently fished at sustainable levels) could make a real difference. Swordfish, assessed as vulnerable by the IUCN, is highly over-fished and should be avoided altogether.

Outrage
Whatever happens, consumer action is likely to be decisive, as was the case in the early 1990's, when public outrage over the slaughter of dolphins led to a ban on the use of drift nets. But how aware are consumers and, perhaps more importantly, retailers, of the problem? A quick survey in Birmingham's indoor market found little knowledge of catch methods among retailers (some couldn't even name the species on sale). At the wholesale market, species and provenance were usually known, but my enquiries about catch methods drew blank faces.

Supermarkets fared somewhat better. Sainsbury's said their fresh tuna was Pacific yellowfin that had been pole-and-line caught, though sometimes it was long-line caught. Sainsbury's have also funded the Marine Stewardship Council to run a three year study looking at the sustainability of tuna fishing. Tesco replied that although some of their tuna came from small-scale pole-and-line operations around the Maldives, most of it was long-line. At a local store, the labels on the big boxes behind the counter included catch method. Waitrose stated that their tuna came from pole-and-line, long-lining and purse-seine nets.

My advice is ask at the counter. If they can't tell you, don't buy, and explain why. Without a step change in consumer knowledge and action, some of the world's most valuable fish stocks and most magnificent marine wildlife will slide into oblivion.

Andrew Hanson

Take Action
The UK is a member of the regional fisheries organisations that supposedly take responsibility for issues such as by-catch and sustainability. Write to the Fisheries Minister, Ben Bradshaw MP, at DEFRA, Nobel House, 17 Smith Square, London SW1A 3JP asking him to take action on long-lining. Alternatively, you can petition Ben Bradshaw and EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg on-line at www.seaturtles.org.

These websites are also useful: www.fishonline.org, www.msc.org, www.birdlife.net, and www.wdcs.org.