One Ocean

In North America we were celebrating the beginning of spring. In the middle east, Japanese and Canadian delegates were celebrating another occasion: the decision not to list Atlantic bluefin tuna in CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Yup, that's right: Monaco put forth the proposal; Canada shut it down.

And it all happened last month, at the 15^th meeting of the conference of the parties (CoP15) held in Doha, Qatar. With this decision to close the door on Monaco's proposal, we are also closing the door on allowing Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks to recover. Right now these fish (specifically, two stocks: the west Atlantic and the east Atlantic) are at all-time low levels: check out their current stock biomasses, as compared with past estimates:

  Historical biomass of two stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna under ICCAT management. Dotted lines denote year of establishment of ICCAT, 1969. See Cullis-Suzuki and Pauly, in press.

This is terrible: when it comes to ocean management, I'm getting used to feeling embarrassed to be Canadian.

In so many other respects, we Canadians are progressive: in matters of race, sex, health care, education, free speech, we are leaders... but when it comes to the environment, we just aren't stepping up. We don't have an excuse NOT to be leaders on this front!

Now I'm just focusing on ocean issues here. Briefly, let's go over a few of Canada's more shameful marine moments in the last 20 years:

1992: Nobody, Canadian or not, forgets the great cod collapse off the eastern shores of Canada in the early '90s, a collapse so severe that, 20 years later, the stocks still haven't recovered.

2006: What about high seas bottom-trawling? Perhaps one of the most destructive fishing practices in history, Canada was all for it- and we don't even have a high seas bottom-trawl fleet! Thanks to us, these trawls are still legal and being used today.

2009: If you're from the west coast of Canada you'll know all about last year's Fraser River sockeye run... or should I say, 'lack of run'. Some stocks only came in at about 10% of predicted returns, making last year's harvest a complete disaster; Harper called for a judicial inquiry into the catastrophe.

2010: Now yet another humiliation for Canada: voting against listing Atlantic bluefin tuna in CITES.

We can do better than this! We depend on the oceans. And ironically, now they depend on us. As I mentioned in a previous post, Canada has less than 1% of our oceans protected.

Canada: let's become leaders in ocean management; let's step it up!

Cullis-Suzuki, S and Pauly, D. (In press). Failing the high seas: a global evaluation of regional fisheries management organizations. Marine Policy, doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2010.03.002.

ICCAT, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna, is one of the current 18 global regional fisheries management organizations. Their mandate is to manage and conserve tuna and other fish species, including Atlantic bluefin.