Rabat, Nov 14 (EFE) .- The future of tuna fishing, and mainly of its most emblematic product, the bluefin tuna, is played today in Marrakech, where the beginning of the meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

According to Spanish sources told Efe at the meeting, it is assumed that approve an increase of 23,000 tonnes of annual fishing of bluefin tuna worldwide to 36,000 in the horizon of 2020, once the scientific committee of ICCAT has verified the good state of fish stocks after nine years of drastic reductions.

However, the focus of the negotiations, which will last until the 22nd, will be how to apply this increase of 55%, if equally in each year (18% per year) or with more conservative measures, as proposed by the different conservation groups that have led the protection of the species in the last years.

The bluefin tuna, whose main world consumer is Japan, suffered in the 90s and 2000s an overexploitation that led ICCAT to establish in 2008 drastic limitations on the number of vessels entitled to fish, in the quantities admitted and in the periods of capture.

The measures seem to have paid off and the ICCAT Scientific Committee has given its approval for the increase in catches, a measure that will benefit the European Union above all, since its fleet fishes 59% of the world's precious catches tuna.

Spain is not only the country that catches more bluefin tuna within the EU, but also at the global level it is also the country with the largest tuna quota: currently Spanish vessels have right to fish 4,300 tons, and aspire to rise to about 7,000, but has no negotiators of their own, but is included in the European delegation.

Another of Spain's interests at this meeting in Marrakech, which will last until the 22nd, is to open the fishing of bluefin tuna to non-specialized craft boats (that is, living from the capture of different species), established throughout the Mediterranean coast and the Strait and that in 2008 were excluded from the catches.

In general, Spain tries to expand the quota for bluefin tuna do with more open criteria and be able to increase them to the maximum since 2018, for what they are facing especially the environmental sectors.

These sectors, with the organization Ecologist PEW at its head, have gone from using conservationist arguments (once the danger to the species has been ruled out) to commercial ones, insisting that a drastic increase in catches of bluefin tuna can sink their prices and ruin the market.

Although bluefin tuna focus all the interest in Marrakech, the ICCAT meeting will also address the future of others less mediatic tunas, such as bonito, shark or bigeye tuna.