In the late 1990s, swordfish had been so overfished in the North Atlantic Ocean that its population faced the possibility of collapse. The dire situation sparked boycotts and conservation campaigns in honor of the highly migratory species, a predator that can move at nearly the speed of a cheetah and slash at prey with the long, flat bill that gives it its name. Managers set a quota and a minimum catch size to protect juveniles, the stock began to recover and it was declared rebuilt in 2013. And now, with a landmark move made Nov. 18, that recovery appears secure. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which manages a wide range of fish stocks across the entire Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas, adopted a “harvest strategy” for swordfish (Xiphias gladius) during its annual meeting, held in Cyprus Nov. 11-18. Government representatives and conservationists hailed the move, which sets up largely automatic science-based fisheries management decisions for the long term. The harvest strategy, which is designed to be resilient to climate change effects, had been in the works for years, but its adoption wasn’t guaranteed until the final gavel fell, with all parties in consensus. “To get this across the finish line was a big success,” Esther Wozniak, an international fisheries manager at the Philadelphia-based think tank Pew Charitable Trusts, told Mongabay. Pew had long advocated for the development of a swordfish harvest strategy. Shana Miller, a project director at the Washington, D.C.-based Ocean Foundation who also…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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