At the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Monaco delegates argued that “industrial fishing” has made this species suffer an over 75 percent drop in population over the last decades.
The statement was rebuked by the head of Japan's delegation, Masanori Miyahara, saying that CITES should have no role in regulating tuna or other marine species. “Let us do this job in ICCAT [International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna] not in CITES,” Miyahara said, according to AP. Japan imports 80 percent of the fish for high-priced sushi and sashimi.
