SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 29 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Canary Islands Coalition has criticized the closure of the bluefin tuna fishery on the islands, as decreed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food with entry into force at midnight on April 28, and has stated that this closure represents “another example of the ninguneo to which the Government of Spain submits to the Canary Islands fishing sector with the approval of the Government of the Canary Islands” and “another ostensible ninguneo to the fishermen of the archipelago”.
The new order of the Government of Spain requires that all bluefin tuna catches made by authorized fishing vessels in the Canary Islands and that do not have an electronic logbook on board must be landed before May 2. For fishing vessels that do have a DEA-type electronic journal on board, the obligation to report their catches, with number of pieces and weight, is established, but they may remain at sea without having to return to port to land catches. For an unspecified date, the Ministry will decide whether to reopen bluefin tuna fishing in the Canary Islands or if, on the contrary, the season for fishing this tuna species of high economic value for the islands is over. .
These restrictions set again in the fishing of bluefin tuna by the Government of Spain, through an order of the General Directorate of Fisheries Management, occur when this year the working capacity of the fishery of this species in Canary waters is the one that increased the least in the entire Spanish territory and the one that later opened up to fishing activity in the whole of the State.
“And now the Government of Spain returns to decree this new closure of bluefin tuna fishing, albeit in a precautionary manner, at the time when more tuna pass through the waters of the islands and when the fish are larger and therefore, of greater productive and economic benefit,” lament sources from the Canary Islands Coalition.
“It cannot be that this measure is taking place now that the fishing fleet of Canarian boats and their crews are at sea to try to solve this season of work,” say sources from the nationalist organization, to stress that now “it is ordered to ships return to land to, supposedly, count the catches when there are still vessels that have not been able to catch the quotas they have assigned”. This precautionary measure is added to the fact that it will be the Government of Spain itself that, in the near future, will decree the opening of the Olympic fishing season.
From CC they point out that these boats “already had their assigned fishing quotas, but now the Government of Spain orders them to stop their work and return to their base ports, where they will have to deal with circumstances that are detrimental to the boats and their crews if with these The new restrictions do not recover the capacity to catch the bluefin tuna quotas that had been assigned to each vessel for this fishing season.” “It is another clear sign of the repeated neglect of the Government of Spain to the fishing sector of the islands, but the most serious thing is that it occurs due to the inaction of the Canarian administrations”, explain sources from the Canary Islands Coalition.
For the Coalition, these new restrictions on bluefin tuna fishing in the waters of the Canary Islands, where a campaign began on March 6 with 248 vessels and a catch quota of 537.69 tons of this valuable tuna species, “demonstrate once again that During these four years, unfortunately, the Government of the Canary Islands and the political parties that support it got used without saying or doing anything to the restrictions against the daily work of the fishermen of the islands”. “In these four years, the Government of the Canary Islands has neither been nor expected to work in defense of a sector as important as tuna fishing in the Canary Islands,” they add.
