Marrakech/Madrid - Environmental organizations Tuesday criticized an agreement reached by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) to promote the recovery of Mediterranean bluefin tuna.

The measures were totally insufficient to protect the species, which overfishing had brought to the brink of collapse, environmentalists said.

The consensus, reached Monday by 45 ICCAT contracting countries and the European Union in the Moroccan city of Marrakech, cuts the total allowable catch for 2009 to
22,000 tons, down from 28,500 tons this year.

The catch is to be further cut to 19,950 tons by 2010.

The plan also foresees reduced fishing opportunities, shorter fishing seasons, and new controls on fishing and farming capacity.

The European Commission hailed the agreement as bringing "an immediate and significant reduction in fishing pressure on the fragile bluefin tuna stock."

The environmental group Oceana, however, slammed the catch limit as "disastrous," saying it ignored the ICCAT's own scientific advice, which set the limit at a maximum of 15,000 tons per year.

In reality, fishing fleets caught 61,000 tons of bluefin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic in 2007, three times the allowed amount, Oceana said in Madrid.

The group, which has called for a closure of the fishery, accused the ICCAT of "threatening the future of bluefin tuna to satisfy the industry's short-term interests."

Sergi Tudela, a fishing expert with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), said in Marrakech that the agreement was "another nail in the coffin of bluefin tuna."

WWF pledged to seek an international trading ban on the species and to widen the boycott undertaken by a number of companies and restaurants.

The EU was aware that environmentalists had requested a lower catch limit, but the EU was just one of the negotiating parties, and the quota system was not the only way to reduce pressure on bluefin tuna, a spokeswoman for the European Commission said in Brussels. (dpa)