CONSERVATIONISTS are urging fishing regulators to reject Japanese demands for larger bluefin tuna catch quotas.

Japan is calling for a 20 per cent increase in catch limits for both smaller and larger bluefin tuna, which are prized in Japanese cuisine.

It says an improvement in the spawning population shows that tuna can recover from decades of overfishing, and wants to expand its catch of smaller fish (less than 30 kilograms in weight) by 801 tons and of larger fish by 976 tons. In 2019 its total catch of each was 3,757 tons and 5,132 tons respectively. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission should adjust the quotas in response to the population increase, it says.

But Pew Charitable Trusts’ international fisheries team officer Grantly Galland said the quotas, set as part of a 2017 recovery plan, were “only the bare minimum required to help this species.”

The aim of the plan is to increase tuna stocks from 4 per cent of their historic level — the level in 2017 — to 20 per cent by 2034. Progress made so far has merely increased numbers to 4.5 per cent of the “baseline” size of pre-industrial fishing populations, a level so low it is still considered at risk of collapse. At 28,000 tons, the spawning stock biomass of Pacific bluefin is still less than half its 1995 level.

Greenpeace’s journalism project Unearthed last week published research showing Western banks including Citi, Morgan Stanley and HSBC have provided “billions of dollars in financial support to companies responsible for the overfishing of at-risk species of tuna” over the last decade.