The European Commission has launched a major EU control campaign aimed at preventing a repeat of last year's overfishing of Mediterranean bluefin tuna by a number of EU member states. This season, 16 aircraft and 49 large and small patrol vessels will conduct inspections at sea, while 50 inspectors will visit vessels in port.

The launch of the Joint Deployment Plan marks the EU's determination to ensure that the 15 year recovery plan for the giant tunas, agreed within the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna, ICCAT, in November 2006, is fully respected.

The Commission says that even effective control measures will not suffice to ensure the sustainability of the fishery until the member states concerned tackle the gross overcapacity of the fleet that targets bluefin tuna.
As documented in a report published last week by the global conservation organization WWF, the whole fishery is plagued by overfishing by a fleet that keeps growing in size and efficiency both in the EU and in the other coastal states that target bluefin tuna.

Joe Borg, European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, said, "I welcome the cooperation of the member states in organizing the joint control effort. However, they need to go much further to tackle the root of the problem with courage and determination by ensuring the necessary scrapping of vessels till a sustainable balance is found between fishing capacity and fishing possibilities."

"Public funding is available under the European Fisheries Fund for vessel owners and crews affected by such scrapping. Financial support is also available to the fishing communities concerned to help them diversify their economies," said Borg.

He pledged that the Commission "will do all it can" to help the member states return the fishery to "ecological, economic and social sustainability." But the country with the greatest overcapacity, Turkey, is not an EU member state, and Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Croatia, which also fish for bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, are not member states either.

Until the fleet overcapacity has been reduced in line with the sustainable level of the resource, control and enforcement will continue to be a critical issue in the fishery.