Sustainability: Bluefin Regulations | Wicked Tuna

you know in other parts of the world uh
you know they still harvest Bluefins
with big boats and you know big
mechanized fishing fleets here in the US
US commercial fishermen are leaders in
the world when it comes to successful
fisheries management we have certain
size standards we have to follow they
have to be over 73 inches that’s a
pretty big fish to catch all right
anything under we have to let go we can
only use rods and reels or hand throwing
hyphens we have strict quotas we have to
follow there’s only a certain amount of
fish we can take out of the ocean we
have very strict quotas when we catch
our allocated quota for the year the
fishery is closed for the season all
that combined although it hasn’t fully
rebuilt the stocks to the historic high
abundance that we they saw in the past
what we do see is a steady increase if
we see a high abundance of different
size classes of fish when we reach our
quota for the year the United States
stopped fishing the law enforcement in
this country is some of the top notch in
the world we don’t have issues with
black markets and you know smuggling a
fish and all that that may take place on
an international level but once again in
the United States we take fisheries
management seriously problem is not here
we follow the guidelines we follow the
rules and again they keep a watchful eye
on it in some of those other countries
they start harvesting bluefin tuna when
they’re 27 inches long that’s not good
for a stock the whole concept of a size
limit is you know you want to wait till
the fish grows and have spawned a few
times before you harvest it so all told
we’re doing the right things in this
country in the United States to rebuild
this stock to ensure there’s plenty of
fish for the people that come after us