The World Wide Fund for Nature, which has also been campaigning for a substantial cut in the catch, is now seeking an international trading ban on bluefin.
It is also one that has carved a part in the heart of the Spanish food lover with its devotion to the red tuna (Atlantic bluefin tuna, famed for its rosy flesh) and the red-skinned Retinto cow.
Moves have been made to transfer responsibility for the bluefin to a different body, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
This organisation has the power to ban trade in an endangered species such as the bluefin entirely.Earlier this year the diminutive principality of Monaco, and its bluefin-loving Prince Albert, endorsed just such a proposal which will be discussed next March at the CITES meeting in Doha.
Last year things were so bad that ICCAT's chairman warned members that if they did not do better their power to manage the bluefin would end up being taken away from them.
See articleAfter much pious talk about the fate of the bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, six Mediterranean countries blocked a European Union proposal to list the species as endangered, which would mean a ban on catching any more.
At the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona last week both Spain (an important tuna-fishing nation) and Japan (an important tuna-buying nation) supported the closure of the Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery until stocks rise.
Yet the high prices commanded by bluefin tuna and the demise of wild stocks have led many people to attempt to raise them in captivity in order to supply the same demand.
This week an international wildlife-protection body begins a meeting that is likely to impose a ban on trading northern Atlantic bluefin tuna.
But a spokesman for the UN agency that regulates trade in endangered species, CITES, confirms that "some countries" want to put bluefin tuna forward for CITES protection if the results of the ICCAT meeting are unsatisfactory.
IF EVER there were a graphic illustration of the tragedy of the commons, it is the plummeting of the world's stocks of bluefin tuna.
