Fishery meeting could decide bluefin tuna's fate

The survival of Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna, exploited to the brink of collapse, could depend on international negotiations starting Monday in Marrakech, Morocco. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) will try to hammer out a new plan that protects the overfished species without throttling the multi-million dollar industry built around it. Measures on the table range from tighter quotas and enforcement to an outright moratorium. The stakes are high not just for bluefin and large-scale fisheries in a dozen countries but for ICCAT itself, according to the organisation's chairman. "Our fate will be sealed ultimately by the decisions we make in Marrakech," Fabio Hazin wrote in a letter to the commission's forty-odd member states two weeks ahead of the special meeting. "Let's not... [read full story]