The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) will take place in Brazil in 2012 to mark the 20

I recommend reading the Pew Document available here  Following is an extract of some of the major recommendations:

In a new report, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) emphasises the urgency of an international agreement to ban harmful government fishing subsidies and to introduce new measures to ensure the sustainability and future viability of the world’s oceans.It estimates economic losses due to over-capacity and over-fishing at US$50 billion per year.Government subsidies have been identifiedthe primary causes of this excessive exploitation. Report available here

TAGS:sustainable, fisheries, fishing, overfishing, overcapacity, fisheries subsidies, UNEP, sustainabiity

A new  study from the UC Davis contradicts earlier reports that salmon farms were responsible for the 2002 population crash of wild pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago of western Canada. Lead author Gary Marty concludes: "Sea lice from fish farms have no significant effect on wild salmon population productivity." Marty suggests that the millions of dollars spent on enclosed tanks for farmed fish might have been wasted. No doubt this new study will touch off another firestorm of controversy over the possible impact of sea lice on wild salmon survival. More here and here

TAGS: aquaculture, sea lice, wild salmon, farmed salmon, Gary Marty, sustainable, fisheries

Much has been made in recent years of the potential role of strengthened RFMOS in managing straddling and highly migratory fish stocks. We have seen the gutting of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization in the name of reform. ICCAT, the commission responsible inter alia for the management of Atlantic bluefin tuna, has come under attack in recent weeks by ENGOs for its failure to take effective actions to protect eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna. And now the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC0) is also coming under attack for failure to adopt effective conservation measures to conserve big eye and yellowfin tuna.

In its Dec 8th issue Nature magazine signalled that a bold move by eight Pacific island nations to preserve the world's last large stocks of tuna was expected to face strong resistance at the WCPFC meeting. The islands have banned fleets that fish with purse-seine nets from operating in a region of international waters roughly the size of India,an area known as the Eastern High Seas. But critics claim that the WCPFC has yet again failed to take any effective action to reduce the decline of valuable big eye and yellowfin tuna. The Commision followed the familiar course of throwing overboard the scientific advice, rejecting its own Scientific Committee’s recommendation of an immediate 29 per cent reduction in the big eye tuna catch.

TAGS:sustainable, fishing, fisheries, overfishing, conservation, tuna, bluefin tuna, ICCAT, WCPFC, bigeye tuna, yellowfin tuna