The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meeting until March 25, is gearing up to vote on banning commerce in bluefin from the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, a motion that requires a two-thirds majority to pass.

So far, fewer than 40 of the approximately 150 countries in Doha have declared their intention to back the move.

"It is very much up in the air. There's a lot of jockeying," said Patrick Van Klaveren of Monaco, which is leading the charge for a ban.

"Japan's lobbying is formidable. Three or four people from the Japanese delegation are constantly criss-crossing the Convention, arranging meetings," he told AFP.

On Sunday, Japanese delegates met with some African nations, said a negotiator from west Africa.

"We are used to it. They do the same thing before each meeting of the International Whaling Commission," the body that oversees global whale populations, he said.

Van Klaveren said that Tokyo was also targeting developing countries, "scaring them about what could happen to their (own tuna) stocks, along the lines of 'your turn will come'."

Monaco's proposal entails placing Atlantic- and Mediterranean-caught bluefin under Appendix I of the CITES rulebook, meaning fish caught in those sea areas could not be sold internationally.

Even though it would not affect bluefin caught in the Pacific, "the Pacific island nations and Asia are also quite sensitive" to Japan's arguments, said van Klaveren.

"Japan is threatening them," said Sue Lieberman, policy director for the Pew Environment Group in Washington.

Tokyo has vowed to fight the moratorium, saying it would ignore any such measure voted into place.

In Seoul on Thursday, the Japanese vice farm minister, Masahiko Yamada, pressed his South Korean counterpart to support Japan's position.

"The Tokyo side made sure that Seoul will continue cooperating with Japan on this issue," Yamada said in a statement.

Tunisia, with major bluefin fisheries in the Mediterranean, is also working the halls in Doha, hoping to muster support from the 22 Arab League nations against the proposal, NGOs said.

A delegate from Tunis denied this. "We have expressed our position, but have done nothing to encourage other countries to share it," Khaled Zahlah told AFP.

Van Klaveren voiced regret that the EU had not taken a stronger stand.

The 27-nation bloc favours the ban amid mounting evidence that stocks of the precious fish -- which can sell for more than 100,000 dollars apiece in Japan -- have crashed over the past 30 years.

But it has asked for implementation to be postponed until a November meeting of ICAAT, the inter-governmental fishery group that manages tuna stocks in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas.

"The EU is not very active. It is absorbed by its own internal negotiations," Van Klaveren complained.

The rotating EU presidency is currently held by Spain which, along with France and Italy, accounts for 50 percent of Mediterranean bluefin catches.

Norway, Switzerland, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Serbia also support the bluefin moratorium, he added.

Japan says that bluefin is not facing extinction, but acknowledges that recent rates of exploitation are probably not sustainable.

The solution, it insists, is stricter management of fisheries, which have consistently exceeded their own quotas.

The CITES secretariat, which makes recommendations on proposals before the Convention, declared on Saturday that bluefin tuna fisheries in the two sea zones were in crisis and met the criteria for a total ban on international trade.

The issue will be debated on Thursday, although a vote is unlikely to take place before next week, officials said.

earlier related report
Sushi wars: Battle looms over bluefin tuna
Paris (AFP) March 11, 2010 - The fate of Atlantic bluefin tuna, eaten to the edge of viability, will be decided in the next two weeks when the world's nations vote on whether to ban cross-border trade in the dwindling species.

A proposal by Monaco, backed by the United States and the European Union, would place the open-water predator in Annex I of the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which meets in Doha, Qatar on March 13-25.

Any steps to remove the ban would depend on the species' capacity to regenerate, which experts say could take a decade or more.

Industrial-scale harvesting on the high-seas has caused bluefin stocks to crash by more than two-thirds in the Mediterranean and by 80 percent in the western Atlantic.

The reason is not hard to find: a single 220-kilo (485-pound) fish can fetch 160,000 dollars (120,000 euros) at auction in Japan, which consumes three-quarters of all the bluefin caught in the world, mainly as sushi and sashimi.

At those prices, the incentive to overfish -- and cheat on poorly enforced quotas -- is overwhelming, say experts.

The tools of the trade have developed apace. So-called longlines trailing 100 kilometres or more behind trawlers have proven devastatingly effective in vacuuming up bluefin, which can reach four metres (13 feet) in length.

The French marine research institute IFREMER, citing industry scientists, calculated that the capacity of tuna flotillas trolling the Mediterranean "surpasses the reproduction capacity of the resource" by a factor of two to three.

Three countries alone -- France, Italy and Spain -- account for more than 50 percent of catches.

Up until 2008, when the catch fell by half, annual hauls were 50,000 to 60,000 tonnes.

"If trade is stopped in Doha, all the scientists agree that bluefin tuna can recover," said Sue Lieberman, policy director for the Pew Environment Group in Washington.

"Another two-to-five years of overfishing, and they won't."

For the last 50 years, the management of bluefin populations has been self-policed by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICAAT, an industry group.

"ICAAT has demonstrated on an annual basis its inability to listen to the scientists and control the fishing," said Carl Safina, founder of the Blue Ocean Institute in New York state.

As recently as the 1980s, bluefin were so numerous they were like "the buffalo herds in the virgin prairies of America," he said, recalling his own past as a professional fisherman.

"An international ban is essential if we ever want to see the species recover," he said.

Still, the measure to ban international commerce is headed for fierce resistance, and faces an uphill battle if it is to gather the two-thirds vote needed for passage.

"There's going to be a huge fight," said one senior European negotiator in favour of the ban, asking not to be named.

"Japan is extremely determined. We have seen them in action at the International Whaling Commission, where we have witnessed unexplainable reversals of position by certain countries," he said.

China and Canada are also likely to oppose the ban, analysts say.

For 2010, ICAAT has lowered the permissible global catch to 13,500 tonnes.

"If the new quota were to be respected for several years, there would be no more scientific justification for banning international trade in the fish," said Alain Fonteneau, a marine biologist at France's Institute for Development Research in Montpellier.

But critics say this may be too little too late, and that the industry has proven that it is unwilling or unable to enforce its own measures.

"ICAAT has been responsible for bluefin tuna since the 1960s, and every year it has continued to decline, in some places by 90 percent," said Lieberman.

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