A new study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has revealed that the equivalent of 18,704 tonnes of live bluefin tuna were traded illegally via Panama between 2000-10 without being reported to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
Other countries involved include Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey and Japan.
WWF is now urging both ICCAT and the countries in question to immediately launch a serious investigation that would allow to either ruling out or endorsing the suspicions of illegal fishing activities pinpointed by the study.
“This is the first ever study on this issue and it probably shows only the tip of the iceberg. We finally managed to get the proof of a situation that has been acknowledged for many years even by ICCAT itself,” said Dr Sergi Tudela, head of WWF’s Mediterranean Fisheries Programme.
After combing through official trade and customs databases, WWF uncovered that during 2000-10, as much as 14,327 tonnes of processed Atlantic bluefin tuna -- an estimated weight of 18,704 tonnes of live fish -- were traded via Panama.
The bluefin tuna was shipped from the Mediterranean countries to Panama, and from there to Japan. As much as 13,730 tonnes of processed bluefin were transported to the Asian country.
The tuna trade peaked in 2003 and 2004 at 3,000-4,000 tonnes per year, and continued at lower numbers as late as 2010.
“According to available records, not a single shipment identified by the report was ever reported to ICCAT,” added Tudela. “If confirmed, it would fully qualify as illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) standards and would equal environmental crime”.
All the countries mentioned in the study were ICCAT Contracting Parties during the time that the unreported trade operations were detected. According to ICCAT rules in force during those 10 years, any international trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna had to be duly reported to the agency to enable cross-checking with catch quotas.
The unreported trade of bluefin tuna through Panama, which was not even recorded in Panama customs, could have taken place without the fish having been physically shipped to Panama. Instead, it is possible that Panamanian-flagged transport vessels and the involvement of intermediary Panama-based companies could have mediated between the source countries and Japan.
According to ICCAT, IUU activities in the bluefin tuna fishery peaked in 2007 at an estimated 61,000 tonnes, worth more than twice the legal quotas. It is believed that recent catches have significantly dropped, but it is unclear how much fish is being caught.