Fishing nations agree to replenish bluefin stocks

TOKYO — The world’s Pacific bluefin tuna won something of a reprieve Friday, when tunafishing countries reached an agreement to gradually rebuild severely depleted stocks while still allowing nations like Japan to catch and consume the delicacy.

Japan — by far the world’s biggest consumer of bluefin, eating about 80 percent of the global haul in the $42 billion tuna industry — had been resisting new rules, while conservationists were warning about the commercial extinction of bluefin in the Pacific Ocean.

Proponents of limits hailed the deal as a compromise that everyone could live with.

“It’s definitely a good first step towards the recovery of the species,” said James Gibbon, global tuna conservation officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “But it is only the first step. There are a lot of commitments that the countries agreed to, and we need to make sure they stick to them.”

At the week-long meeting in Busan, South Korea, the two bodies charged with shared management of Pacific bluefin — the northern committee of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission — hammered out a plan to try to put the fish back on a path to sustainability. Countries represented at the meeting included the United States, Canada, China, South Korea and Japan.

Pacific bluefin stocks have become so endangered that its population has been depleted by more than 97 percent from its historic high, down to just 2.6 percent of that level, due to overfishing.

At the meeting, the two organizations agreed to a target to rebuild tuna stocks to 20 percent of historic levels by 2034, the minimum level that scientists consider necessary to protect the species.

If the chances of meeting the 2034 rebuilding target fall below 60 percent, the parties agreed to immediately reduce their catch levels. Over the next seven years, countries’ catch quotas could only be increased if there was a 75 percent chance of meeting the new goal.

The groups also agreed develop a “catch documentation scheme” by 2020 to try to stop illegally caught Pacific bluefin from entering the international market.