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Bluefin tuna - Source: Reuters -
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Dozens of fish wholesalers protested at a market in Tokyo on Thursday against a proposed ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna trade ahead of a meeting that could decide to protect the valuable fish used in sushi as an endangered species.
The meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) from Saturday will consider whether to list species including the Atlantic bluefin tuna, whose stocks have depleted rapidly, as endangered and prohibit international trade in them.
Japan, the world's biggest Atlantic bluefin tuna consumer, is against the proposal and a senior fisheries agency official has said the country would not comply if a total trade ban were imposed.
Merchants at the Tsukiji fish market, where about 2,000 tuna fish are auctioned each day, say the Atlantic bluefin will not become extinct if just the larger ones are caught and have blamed the use of so-called round haul nets for overfishing.
"We want to protect Japanese food culture and to prevent tuna from disappearing as a food source," says Tadao Ban, president of the Wholesalers Co-operative of Tokyo Fish Market.
The protest comes a day after the European Union agreed to propose the ban on international trade in the fish.
Stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna, which can fetch up to $US100,000 for a single fish, have declined by more than 80% since 1970 to about 3.2 million, according to CITES.
About 80% of the fish is consumed in Japan as sushi and sashimi.
"The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species aims to protect species that are endangered. I personally wonder if bluefin tuna are in such a condition now," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano told a news conference on Thursday.
Japan produced and imported about a total of 411,000 tonnes of tuna in 2008 and about 5% of that was Atlantic bluefin tuna, an official at the fisheries agency says.
About 175 nations are due to vote at the Doha CITES meeting and a two-thirds majority is needed for the trade ban to be adopted.
