The European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) is coordinating the monitoring of the bluefin tuna catch this season with eight member states involved in the fishery.
Control and inspections will be pooled among the eight-member states – Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, and Spain –the EFCA has said.
“This species has been subject to new management and control measures adopted in 2021 by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) and the fishery is subject to a joint scheme of international inspection in international waters,” the EFCA has said.
Ireland does not have a quota for bluefin tuna, although fishermen have reported sizeable shoals of the migratory species in Irish waters for part of the season over the past few years.
Ironically, under the EU/UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement, a share of the EU's bluefin tuna quota (0.25%) has been transferred to Britain.
Last year, Minister for Marine Charlie McConalogue told the Dáil, that landings of bluefin tuna taken from the Irish exclusive economic zone (EEZ) were “very small in relation to the total bluefin tuna landings, with the majority in the North East Atlantic coming from the Bay of Biscay area”.
He said fishery data did not specify catches on the basis of EEZ details.
However, he said an analysis of the most recent publically available dataset by the Marine Institute for the period 2015 to 2018 showed landings of between 37.8 tonnes (2015) and 31.8 tonnes (2018) caught in the Irish EEZ.
He said the average annual EU quota for the East Atlantic and Mediterranean - the management area for the stock - was 12,470 tonnes over this period.
The Marine Institute has developed a programme to satellite tag bluefin tuna, working with partners, including Stanford University USA, University of Acadia Canada, Trinity College Dublin and ICCAT.
A catch-tag-release science-based fishery for authorised recreational angling vessels has been in place in Ireland since 2019.
Mr McConalogue said the catch-tag-release programme supports the collection of valuable data on the migratory patterns of bluefin tuna in Irish waters. He said it would supplement the ongoing research that is being undertaken by the Marine Institute.
“The available bluefin tuna quota is allocated each year to Member States on the basis of relative stability as established in the late 1990s. At that time, Ireland did not have a track record of commercial fishing for Bluefin Tuna and, accordingly, did not receive a quota allocation,” Mr McConalogue told the Dáil on April 21st, 2021.
He said he was “committed to doing all possible” through the forthcoming review of the Common Fisheries Policy to “secure additional quota where possible for Irish fishers”.
“I will consider how Ireland will prepare for and participate actively and effectively in the review, including the interaction with stakeholders to prepare Ireland's case and identify priorities,”he said.