Thus both are correct. The data are scarcely fit for any useful purpose, despite years of fishing during which useful data could and should have been collected; they certainly are too poor to easily be used to determine whether or not a closure will

have any effect on tuna conservation or catches. Some in the tuna industry (the words being put to me in the wings of the meeting) hope it might be re-opened again soon – three years being a stated goal, when no proof could be found to show a significant change. Of course, it was DAPT said, one way to gain the desired data would be to continue the fishery for scientific reasons: ‘scientific fishing’ perhaps, like ‘scientific whaling’. So let us look first at some key aspects of tuna industry, and what it is doing to the ocean. Of the MK-2206 clinical trial total Indian Ocean tuna catch, Chagos provides, apparently, only 2% by some measures (4 or even 6% by others). We learned that the annual capture in the Indian Ocean is 30–40% of the standing stock. To a population biologist that is a terrifying high level, but the fishing industry lives with such figures regularly it seems, playing dangerously with the capital in the way recently seen by gambling bankers. But, as with the recent banking crisis, greatest chances are taken when it is

not their own capital they are playing with, and we can see the dismal results of both industries around the world. Even that 30–40% figure is dubious: the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission itself has recently commissioned a report that highlights many inadequacies of data and performance (Anon, 2009). Even aside from the under reporting, an independent assessment of the population trends (derived from the fisheries stock

assessments) of the two main tuna fisheries in the Indian Ocean show that both the yellowfin and bluefin tuna have declined to the point where they have breached the conservationist benchmarks of concern and would qualify for listing by the IUCN Red List as being Vulnerable (see Juan-Jorda et al., 2010). In the Arachidonate 15-lipoxygenase much better investigated Atlantic tuna fishery, it was determined that under reporting was probably a factor of 2.5 (Sloan, 2006). Multiply, if you will, the 30–40% admitted capture by some unknown multiplier! Such under reporting is not limited to the Atlantic: we might remember Japan’s admission of under reporting its southern Bluefin tuna catch also, after it was caught out (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1765413.htm). It requires a flight of fancy to imagine that tuna fishers are better behaved in the more anarchic Indian Ocean. The inshore artisanal element, for example, is another large unknown, and the ocean suffers from pervasive illegal and unregulated fishing. The argument was made that a tuna stock is presumed to be a migratory species.