Thank you for those questions.
First, let me go back to the CITES recommendation that bluefin tuna be listed as an endangered species. If bluefin tuna had been listed on CITES, a ban on trade in bluefin tuna among countries would have been put in place. It would not stop domestic fishing. So any country that consumes all of its tuna would have had no restriction on the bluefin tuna fishery. That would mean that the countries that are the violators, which are currently involved in overfishing bluefin tuna, would have kept right on fishing bluefin tuna, and Canada would have been penalized, because we export all of our tunas. So that would have done nothing to solve the problem.
What we said was that we want to manage bluefin tuna through a regional fisheries management organization, which is ICCAT. So this year we went to ICCAT, and Canada has taken a decrease in the total allowable catch for the last three years because we're good, responsible managers of this fishery. In this year, we've seen some success in the rebuilding of the stock. Science is showing us that the stock is rebuilding, so we want to be cautious, and we want to ensure that we allow it to rebuild.
This year's meetings led to a small reduction of the Canadian total allowable catch of about 11 tonnes, which is very small. We certainly can live with that. In Canada we have the best-managed bluefin fishery in the world. We fish with a hook and line. Every tuna is tagged and accounted for, so we're doing our part to rebuild the stock. Of course, through ICCAT, we must ensure that the rest of the world does its part as well.
We were disappointed that some of the management measures we put forward for stronger reporting did not get adopted, but we're going to continue to work on that.