Countries fishing the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean agreed Tuesday to expand the annual quota for prized Bluefin tuna to reflect an improvement in their stocks. Environmentalists insisted the increase was excessive and premature.
Photo via Oceana, Keith Ellenbogen
The 50-nation International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas agreed to hike the quota from 24,000 tons this year to 28,000 next year, with a further 4,000 tons added in each of the following two years.
The decision means the quota has more than doubled from five years ago, when once depleted stocks of Bluefin tuna, a delicacy in sushi and sashimi dishes the world over, first started showing the potential of a recovery.
"We have been able to decide a gradual increase of captures, by staying careful. And we are staying within the scientific advice," Stefaan Depypere, the head of the European Union delegation said in an interview.
Environmentalists insisted the advice was more ambivalent and were bitterly disappointed since they maintain that the recovery of the Bluefin is still too fragile to permit such major increases in fishing quotas.
"This year was an enormous step backwards for sustainable tuna fisheries," said Paulus Tak of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Considering how many species have been overfished to near commercial extinction in the past few decades, from cod off eastern Canada to Mediterranean Bluefin, the challenge of increasing catch quotas and still safeguarding stocks is daunting and fraught with risk.
"The status of the stocks was ignored," said Tak. "Instead states decided to catch more fish, faster than ever." Environmentalists had called for a slight increase in catch quotas at best.
Some environmental groups are troubled by the ICCAT's scientific findings and think they might be overly optimistic.
But influential partners like the 28-nation European Union and Japan believe the scientific advice has underpinned a rise in the annual catch quota to 36,000 tons by 2020. The EU said it is moving from Bluefin recovery to management of the stocks and will close off some loopholes in the system to improve efficiency.
Bluefin tuna's annual market value stands around $200 million at the dock and four times more at the final point of sale.
McRAE-HELENA, Ga. (AP) — Someone using a magnet to fish for metal objects in a Georgia creek pulled up a rifle as well as some lost belongings of a couple found slain in the same area more than nine years ago.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says driver's licenses, credit cards and other items dragged from Horse Creek in rural Telfair County are “new evidence” in a murder case that's still awaiting trial.
A citizen who was magnet fishing in the creek on April 14 discovered a .22-caliber rifle, the GBI said in a news release Monday. The unnamed person returned to the same spot two days later and made another find: A bag containing a cellphone, a pair of driver's licenses and credit cards.
The agency says the licenses and credit cards belonged to Bud and June Runion. The couple was robbed and fatally shot before their bodies were discovered off a county road in January 2015.
Authorities say the couple, from Marietta north of Atlanta, made the three-hour drive to Telfair County to meet someone offering to sell Bud Runion a 1966 Mustang.
A few days later, investigators arrested Ronnie Adrian “Jay” Towns on charges of armed robbery and murder. They said Towns lured the couple to Telfair County by replying to an online ad that the 69-year-old Bud Runion had posted seeking a classic car, though Towns didn't own such a vehicle.
Georgia courts threw out Towns’ first indictment over problems with how the grand jury was selected — a prolonged legal battle that concluded in 2019. Towns was indicted for a second time in the killings in 2020, and the case was delayed again by the COVID-19 pandemic. He has pleaded not guilty.
Court proceedings have also likely been slowed by prosecutors’ decision to seek the death penalty, which requires extra pretrial legal steps.
Towns' defense attorney, Franklin Hogue, did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment Tuesday.
Prosecutors are preparing for Towns' trial to start as soon as August, though no date has been set, said District Attorney Tim Vaughn of the Oconee Judicial Circuit, which includes Telfair County. He said the newly discovered evidence should prove useful.
“It was a good case already," Vaughn said Tuesday, "but this makes it an even better case.”
He said the rifle from the creek is the same caliber as the gun that killed the Runions, though investigators are still trying to determine whether it's the weapon used in the crime.
The items found in the creek also led investigators to obtain warrants to search a Telfair County home where they recovered additional evidence. The GBI’s statement gave no further details and Vaughn declined to comment on what was found.
FILE - Ronnie Adrian "Jay" Towns makes his first courtroom appearance, Jan. 27, 2015, in McRae, Ga. According to a news release issued Monday, April 23, 2024, someone using a magnet on Sunday, April 14, to fish for metal objects in a Georgia creek pulled up a rifle as well as some lost belongings of Bud and June Runion, the couple found slain in the same area more than nine years ago. Towns was arrested shortly their bodies were discovered on charges of armed robbery and murder. (Kent D. Johnson/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)
FILE - This combination of photos provided on Jan. 26, 2015, by the Cobb County Police Department shows June Runion, of Marietta, Ga., and her husband, Elrey "Bud" Runion. According to a news release issued Monday, April 23, 2024, someone using a magnet on Sunday, April 14, to fish for metal objects in a Georgia creek pulled up a rifle as well as some lost belongings of the couple found slain in the same area more than nine years ago. (Cobb County Police Department via AP, File)
