Sustainable management
The Albacora Group supports the sustainable management of world tuna and resources based on the following principles:
- The present fleet is sufficient for the capture and extraction from the Ocean's of just the right amount of tuna that allows the resource to be exploited comfortably.
- The construction of new tuner-capturing ships (including longliners) must be subject to the prior scrapping of the same amount of effective tonnage of ships in operation.
- It is necessary to establish closed seasons in space and time in all the oceans of the world in order to protect the resource and to allow the regeneration of biomass.
- The working conditions of the crews of tuna fishing boats must comply with a series of minimum conditions, avoiding the situations of semi-slavery and clear abuse they can be seen in the case of some ships owners operating under certain flags. In this sense, the fleet of the Albacora Group is proud of being a leader in the application of safety measures, working and health conditions, crew accommodation, etc., that contribute to creating safe, respectful and stable working conditions. It is for this reason that we support the establishment of a series of socio-working conditions, necessary in order to obtain the corresponding Health Certificates, that prevent certain companies from benefiting from treating their workers in a degrading manner.
- All boats that fail to comply with safety, health and hygiene standards must be scrapped.
- The low carbon footprint (the generation of harmful greenhouse effect gases by industry) of tuna fishing boats is an important consideration when assessing their ecological impact. In this way, the latest generation of ships (sometimes accused unjustly of compromising the viability of the resource) are precisely the ones that have the best carbon footprint coefficient. In our opinion, any renovation of the fishing fleet (always, as we have said before, following the scrapping of the pre-existing antiquated fleet in operation) must always be done by increasing the capacity of each fishing unit at the cost, we insist, of the scrapping of the equivalent capacity of old units.
- The work of RFOs and supra-national fishing control bodies must be promoted, but in addition to the traditional scientific criteria commonly used it is necessary to take advantage of the contributions of Fishing-boat Captains who have an understanding of the electronic detection of young fish, currents, sea temperatures, thermoclines, the influence of the Moon, etc.
- The work of the Scientific Committees of the RFOs must be supported, and their reports must be drawn up in all cases based on the strictest criteria of neutrality and transparency.
- Illegal, undeclared and non-controlled fishing (the so-called 'INN fishing') must be dealt with severely but those ships whose activities enter the realm of illegal and non-regulated fishing must be identified in each case. It is necessary to avoid confusing this concept with occasional infractions that might have been incurred accidentally in the normal development of their activity: both concepts are very different despite the fact that on occasions there are people who say, in their own interests, that they are the same.
- It is necessary to invest in new technologies that avoid the unwanted capture of young fish. Progress must be made in this field either through an improvement in acoustic equipment or through better fishing techniques.
- With regard to the protection of the marine environment, we reiterate our rejection of the dumping of any kind of waste in the sea.