Bradshaw On Tuna - 20/07/2007

Britain has called on the European Commission (EC) to take urgent action to stop the use of illegal fishing nets in the Mediterranean, which are decimating endangered bluefin tuna and are responsible for the indiscriminate slaughter of dolphins and turtles.
Drift nets have been banned in the European Union (EU) since 2002, but there are regular reports of Italian and French vessels ignoring the ban. Recently, a boat owned by marine conservationists Oceana, which was monitoring illegal activity, was attacked by a group of drift netters off the coast of southern France.
On June 11th UK Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw told a meeting of fellow ministers in Luxembourg that the UK was "very disturbed" by the reports and asked that the EC take urgent and decisive action to ensure that the drift-net ban was enforced and complied with. Earlier, the UK voted against the long-awaited proposals to protect bluefin tuna stocks in the Mediterranean, saying that they were not tough enough.
The UK and Ireland were also unhappy that EU rules requiring any overfished stock to be paid back in future are not being implemented for tuna, but are being implemented for UK and Irish overfishing of mackerel, which are not under threat.