Word: mediterranean
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...environmentalists and marine scientists are right, the world's remaining stocks of bluefin tuna, 90% of which are in the Mediterranean, could be on the verge of extinction. Says Alain Fonteneau, a marine biologist at France's government-run Institute for Development Research in Montpellier: "If we do nothing, in five years we will fish the last bluefin tuna...
...Sergi Tudela of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). "The measures that have been adopted will drive the bluefin tuna to collapse." Not so, say European officials, who contend that their quota plan was the best deal possible, in part because it won the backing of Arab countries on the Mediterranean, who perceive ICCAT as controlled by the world's major fishing powers - the U.S., Canada, Japan and Europe. "You need to have all of those involved to feel ownership over this," says Pierre Amilhat, head of the European Commission's Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, who led Europe...
...surge in bluefin-tuna-fishing over the past decade has been driven by the proliferation of sushi restaurants across the world. The bluefin industry, once the province of rustic local fishing fleets in the Mediterranean, was last year worth about $1.6 billion. Today tuna fleets use high-tech spotter planes buzzing over the Med during the summertime tuna-spawning season in search of shoals that have escaped the trappers. The industry's major players are massive multinational corporations like Mitsubishi, the world's biggest tuna trader - Japan imports the bulk of bluefin tuna caught in the Med. Some...
...Mediterranean tuna trade earns millions in tax revenues for Europe and employs thousands of Spanish and Italian fishermen, whose livelihoods have been pummeled by declining stocks in recent years. The specter of further job losses amid a global economic downturn has militated against European officials pressing for sharper cuts in bluefin-fishing. "None of the [fisheries] commissioners want to come back home and say, 'I have saved bluefin tuna but I have ruined my fishing industry'," says Fonteneau, who estimates that fishermen make as much in one month selling high-priced bluefin tuna as they do during an entire year...
...wars go on in Iraq and Afghanistan, the more combat-experienced men there will be available to planners of terror attacks. And we should count on the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan going global - there is no reason they could not blend into the waves of immigrants crossing the Mediterranean from Northern Africa to Europe every...