Title:
Activists Say Fishing Limit Not Enough to Save
Bluefin Tuna
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
An international group has set the limit for the two
thousand eleven catch of bluefin tuna in the eastern
Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. The limit is just
under thirteen thousand metric tons. That is six
hundred tons less than the two thousand ten quota, a
reduction of four percent. Conservation groups
criticized the move, saying the cut is not big
enough to support the recovery of bluefin tuna in
the Mediterranean.The International Commission for
the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas set the catch in
November in Paris. Delegates to the commission
represent the governments of forty-eight fishing
nations. In two thousand six, the commission
established a plan to stop overfishing. The goal is
to rebuild bluefin populations in the eastern
Atlantic and the Mediterranean by twenty twenty-two.
The European Commission had called for reducing the
catch in two thousand eleven to six thousand tons to
improve the chances for the huge and highly valuable
fish. But Mediterranean members of the European
Union rejected that proposal even before the ten-day
meeting began. Still, EU Fisheries Commissioner
Maria Damanaki said the meeting took "a step in the
right direction for sustainable management" of
bluefin tuna.The fishing industry wanted to keep the
existing catch limit. Atlantic bluefin can grow
three meters long and weigh as much as six hundred
fifty kilograms. France, Italy and Spain catch most
of the Atlantic bluefin eaten in the world. Most of
the catch goes to Japan. Japan called for stronger
action against illegal fishing and under-reporting
of bluefin catches.Conservation activists say the
eastern Atlantic has only about one-fourth as many
bluefin tuna as it did in the nineteen fifties. And
the population in the western Atlantic has dropped
by more than eighty percent since nineteen seventy.
Environmental groups say illegal fishing and
under-reporting might mean there are even fewer
bluefin than estimates suggest.The Center for
Biological Diversity, an activist group, recently
launched a boycott of the prized fish. It says
thousands of people around the world have signed a
promise not to eat bluefin tuna or spend money at
sushi restaurants that still serve it. Susan
Lieberman of the Pew Environment Group in Washington
says people should care what happens to fish that
are important to the environment of the sea. For VOA
Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
